Urban Diary     

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  			January 2008 COMMENT: Jan Gehl’s pedestrian ideas for Sydney   There’s another election in the air. Local councils throughout New South Wales face the voters this coming September. Hence the flotsam of colourful ideas floating from the office of Clover Moore, Lord Mayor of Sydney’s City Council. And there’ll be plenty more by election day. During her term, Clover has pandered mightily to her inner-city constituency’s almost pathological loathing of motor vehicles and equally extravagant ardour for all forms of public transport. ‘Light‘, ‘metro’ or ‘heavy‘, anything on rails has her undying love. And if rail can’t do the job, pedestrian walkways and bicycle tracks must fill the gaps. Just no more smelly, polluting cars. Beloved of green activists and journalists, this line suits Clover’s electoral interests to a tee. If it doesn’t suit the rest of the city, so what? The inner-city is special. Clover’s support base is in suburbs ringing the CBD. They are full of people who trek the short distance to the CBD for work and leisure. Most are white-collar office workers, and many work for government. Central Sydney is already a well-serviced public transport hub. So few drive very much, and motor vehicles are marginal to their existence. Life would be so much nicer without them. Such attitudes may seem selfish and impractical. But not to Clover. For her they have the makings of a ‘vision’. And in the cause of turning vision into reality - or at least into another election victory - she lured a prophet to our shores. Last year, Danish architect Jan Gehl (pictured) spent months investigating Sydney’s CBD before issuing his prescription, a weighty report called Public Spaces, Public Life Sydney 2007. His central point? You guessed it - too many cars. To be fair, Professor Gehl is a lifelong advocate of pedestrian-oriented urban design, having spent a career advising cities how to save their streets from the evil motor vehicle. He casts a long shadow over Copenhagen, apparently. Clients know what they are getting, as did Clover. He didn’t let her down. Gehl came up with the near-utopian idea of banning private vehicles from George Street, Sydney’s central thoroughfare, or ’spine’ as he aptly calls it, along its whole length from Circular Quay to Central Station. It should be reserved for public transport, he says, preferably light-rail, and bicycles. That way people get to stroll at leisure, without having to stop at pedestrian crossings. Most of his suggestions hang off this radical proposal. Three large public, and vehicle-less, squares should punctuate George Street at Circular Quay, Town Hall and Central. And Park Street, which crosses George Street, should also be closed to private vehicles. Some streets should be for pedestrians only, he says. The report goes on, smiting vehicles left, right and centre. Professor Gehl spent nine months in Sydney, but it clearly wasn’t enough. While there’s plenty of scope to improve the city’s traffic management, he missed the point entirely. Three constants govern the growth and character of Sydney’s CBD. First, it is a relatively small space enclosed by physical boundaries on three sides - Darling Harbour in the west, Sydney Harbour across the north and the Domain-Hyde Park along the eastern flank. Expansion is forced upward or southward. This accounts for the high concentration of skyscrapers in the most conveniently located blocks. While this concentration of office space attracts considerable traffic, entry and exit points are limited by the physical boundaries. Flexibility of traffic routes, therefore, is at a premium. Also, the small area and commuter volume rule out a dense transit network like Paris‘s Metro or London‘s Underground. Most internal journeys by typical city workers or visitors are within walking distance. The massive cost would simply outweigh any real benefits. Second, Sydney is a modern city and a commercial centre, not an historic or administrative one. Nor is it a national capital like Gehl’s cherished Copenhagen. Sydney was never laid out to a plan, but grew organically. There are no extensive blocks of grand, historic state buildings as in many European cities. It has few structures or monuments of historic significance. Buildings are raised up and torn down according to commercial imperatives. Overwhelmingly, building stock is allocated to commerce, and commerce means traffic. Third, the harbour will always be Sydney’s most aesthetic feature. The demand for office space is most intense in northern blocks and declines southward. Street closures can only work on the premise that development will shift south, but this is to deny the gravitational pull of the harbour. In Sydney, those with the dollars compete for views of that spectacular waterway. Anyone who can will crowd northward, as close as possible to the water, the bridge, Circular Quay and the Opera House. If these are the CBD‘s ‘iron laws’ of development, Gehl’s blueprint violates them all. The CBD is a mini-economy, sucking in and spewing out countless services each day. Many traders and customers aren’t based there and don’t live anywhere close. They come, transact their business and go. Greater Sydney is evolving into a polycentric conurbation. But Sydney CBD still interacts with a vast urban hinterland, stretching up and down the coast and across to the blue mountains. Those glass towers feed a host of outside contractors: maintenance crews, carriers, technicians, security staff, couriers, caterers and the list goes on. Not to mention thousands of tourists and ad hoc visitors. Street closures, light-rail lines and other impediments to the circulation of traffic erode the CBD‘s vitality. This is more true of Sydney than many western cities. Neither Clover nor her supporters have much stake in the CBD’s commercial velocity, so to speak. As employed office workers or city dwellers, their interest is in the city’s street-level amenity. Hence the aversion to stepping around cars, vans and trucks. Professor Gehl resorts to a cardiac metaphor to describe Sydney. ‘Its heart is congested’, he says, ‘choking on the noise and fumes of the internal combustion engine’. In fact, circulating traffic is like blood entering and leaving its aortic chamber. Every street closed to private vehicles is a blocked artery. Without the lifeblood of traffic, the CBD is liable to cardiac arrest. Were Professor Gehl‘s ideas ever implemented, Sydney won’t just be a city for pedestrians, but a very pedestrian city.    TNC  20 January 2008                                     Like to respond?                                                          Top
  			November 2007 COMMENT: For home buyers, no dream in Disneyland    The housing affordability debate has taken a strange turn lately. So strange that we need to ask a basic question. Is it about economics or social welfare? The general answer, of course, is that it’s both, but to widely different degrees. For a clear majority of Australians, housing has always been an economic issue. Their needs are met in the marketplace, by buying and selling properties. For a minority who can’t break into the market, state and commonwealth governments have funded schemes for public or social housing on strict eligibility criteria. At any rate, in Australia social housing has been a marginal sector, a safety net for the disadvantaged. It represents just 5 per cent of the nation’s housing stock. So, what’s the point? There are early signs that the policy distinctions between private and welfare housing are breaking down. If these signs turn into something more tangible, Australia faces a startling new development. Home ownership will slip beyond the reach of low and middle income workers. Only the well-off will dare to dream of owning a home, especially a single-family house. In the affordability crisis, welfare activists see their best opportunity in decades. A key social movement of the 1970s, welfare advocacy lost ground in the shift to market-oriented solutions over the past 25 years. On the housing front, it was trampled in the stampede to upscale outer-suburban dwellings, part of a generational rise in living standards and disposable incomes related, ultimately, to economic deregulation. Today the lobby has a lower profile, but retains its turf. Advocates for state intervention fight on, scattered throughout government schemes and agencies, charities, churches and university social work faculties. Their disdain for market solutions remains undimmed. Those with long memories will be familiar with Julian Disney. As president of the NSW and Australian councils of social service, Disney was once the high-profile face of welfare advocacy. His career mirrored the lobby’s own trajectory. In recent years he has settled into a comfortable academic post, Director of the Social Justice Project at the University of NSW. He’s more visible, these days, as chair of the National Housing Affordability Summit, a coalition of welfare groups and trade unions. Voices in and around the summit, most prominently Disney’s, have deftly exploited the heightened sense of urgency around housing affordability, not to mention the heated election year climate. Above all, they have been busy planting a distinct narrative in the public mind. On 14 November, Disney gave it a spin on the Sydney Morning Herald features page. It goes like this. Cities have reached the outer limits of feasible expansion. Their outskirts have stretched too far from where jobs are located. These days, both partners need to enter the workforce, and mothers juggle work and children. For most couples, the time and expense incurred in travelling such distances isn’t bearable. They are forced to live near their jobs. But land is scarce in these areas, so house prices are exorbitant. Couples must resign themselves to renting. Governments should intervene to expand the stock of rental accommodation. Disney claims ‘many households now have a stronger need to live near a wide range of job options’ and ‘these changes have contributed to the gentrification of inner suburbs and house price inflation’. Many are being forced to ‘live in substandard housing or a long way from job opportunities and community services’. The government must ‘remove excessively generous tax benefits for wealthy landlords and owner-occupiers’. Evidently, Disney is no fan of The Great Australian Dream. There’s at least one glaring flaw in this analysis. It’s just absurd to suggest that jobs are concentrated in the ‘inner suburbs’. Disney describes the typical city of 30 or 40 years ago. In the modern service-oriented, motorised and communications technology linked economy, jobs follow consumers and gravitate to where costs are lowest. They aren’t tied to fixed transportation nodes like ports, waterways and rail lines, and haven‘t been for some time. The Herald runs a generally anti-suburban line, but Catharine Munro, the paper’s urban affairs editor, is fine. On 24 September, her article ‘Tale of a city turning inside out’ noted that ‘there was a time when business was done in the city and people went home to the suburbs’. Now, ‘large companies are embracing suburbia while Sydneysiders are taking to inner-city apartments at a faster rate than they are to houses’. Munro refers to the new ‘business park’ phenomenon, amongst other things. And the NSW Government’s City of Cities plan earmarks zones in outer western Sydney for expected employment growth, such as the Western Sydney Employment Hub near the M4 and M7 motorways. If there’s a drift to inner-city apartments across all income and occupation groups, and that’s not clear, job location has little to do with it. In this context, it’s interesting to note former Labor leader Mark Latham’s election commentary in the Australian Financial Review of 9 November. Latham denied any housing affordability problem, let alone a crisis. He also thinks home buyers are abandoning the fringe, though not because of jobs - rather, for ‘water views and boutique shopping’. His evidence: ‘In south-west Sydney, for example, home buyers can purchase a three-bedroom brick house in a decent neighbourhood for less than $250,000’. Looking at it more deeply, the position is rather more complicated. Neither jobs nor lifestyle are turning buyers away from the fringe. Prices are actually holding up across many fringe suburbs. Latham’s $250,000 price claim needs to be put in context. Just peruse the Herald’s Domain website, which posts median house prices across Sydney’s suburbs. Why is the median price in Rouse Hill on the far north-western fringe, yet to be connected to Sydney’s rail network, as high as $510,000? Why are medians in nearby fringe suburbs of Kellyville and Beaumont Hills as high as $550,000 and $575,000 respectively? Turn to Latham’s case of the south-west. The median in Campbelltown region is $340,000. Inside the region, medians can be as low as $265,000 in Macquarie Fields. But move further out towards the fringe in adjacent Wollondilly Shire, and medians can be as high as $482,500 in Glen Alpine and $415,000 in Blair Athol. Adverse social factors appear to be depressing prices in places like Macquarie Fields and other Campbelltown suburbs. Sadly, the region struggles with a history of failed public housing projects. Pockets of unemployment, welfare dependency and crime persist. In February 2005, Macquarie Fields erupted in an unprecedented four day riot. Inevitably, buyers will not be drawn to suburbs with poor reputations (however unfair that may be on the locals, most of whom are law-abiding and gainfully employed). These are special cases, nevertheless. Judging by prices in the vicinity of Rouse Hill and Glen Alpine, distance from ‘the centre’ is less critical than welfare flacks like Disney insist. Arguably, prices on much of the fringe are still too high for new buyers, and this is a function of supply as much as anything else. It’s about the system of land releases. Affordability pressures are still susceptible to market solutions, if policymakers will grasp them. Sure, freeing up land supply will deflate current values, and this entails a political risk. But it comes down to a question of national priorities. Australia is an affluent, land-rich country with a low population density. The notion that our housing arrangements should slide into the clutches of a quasi-welfare apparatus is ludicrous. Australian families will not relish a future crammed into high-density apartments, nor perpetual obeisance to a landlord. Disney and friends should stop trying to hijack the agenda for their purposes. They occupy a corner of it, and there they should stay.      TNC  21 November 2007                                  Like to respond?                                                      Top
  	September 2007 COMMENT: APEC - why the police won On 30 November 1999, delegates gathered in Seattle for that year’s World Trade Organization ministerial conference. Today the event is remembered less for an abortive round of trade negotiations than for the mayhem wreaked on the city’s streets. In what became known as the ‘Battle of Seattle’, around 40,000 anti-globalisation protesters converged on downtown Seattle, leaving a trail of smashed shopfronts and bloodied police in their wake. Cleanup costs and police overtime bills amounted to $US3 million. Losses due to property damage and business interruption were estimated at $US20 million. The era of anti-globalisation activism entered a new, menacing phase. Riots soon became a routine feature of peak economic and trade forums. Leader and ministerial meetings of the WTO, the G8, the G20, the World Economic Forum and even the Commonwealth Heads of Government (whose members mostly represent poor countries) proceeded in a state of virtual siege. The 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy was perhaps the most shocking of all. Confrontations between police and up to 200,000 protestors ended in 400 receiving severe injuries and one fatality. A 23-year-old activist was shot by police as he hurled a fire extinguisher into their jeep. On our shores, a history of anti-globalisation disturbances culminated in street violence at last November’s G20 Summit in Melbourne. Protesters rampaged through streets around the summit venue, disrupted traffic, pummelled vehicles, trashed fast-food outlets and, in some cases, assaulted police. Several were arrested and charged. Again, the summit’s agenda was overshadowed by images of protestors slamming garbage cans into windscreens. What was in store for Sydney’s week-long APEC leaders summit? After all, Melbourne was just a gathering of finance ministers. Sydney would be hosting 21 heads of government, including the Great Satan himself, George W Bush at the nadir of his popularity. APEC organisers had every reason to expect civic meltdown. Trade was on the agenda as well as climate change, which joined the post-Seattle list of gripes against global capitalism. Above all, passions aroused by the Iraq war, along with his refusal to sign up to Kyoto, made Bush the stock villain of protest politics. Surely, this was an opportunity not to be missed. Anti-globalisation militancy was a genuine concern. The anti-globalisation movement is a loose coalition of well-meaning if misguided aid agencies, charities, labour unions, feminists, indigenous groups, environmentalists and students. Most are socialists or anarchists of various stripes, clinging to the Marxist view of free trade as a licence for corporate pillage. Some represent sectors in the developed world threatened by cross-border investment. The cause is a fertile source of slogans, but anti-trade rhetoric doesn’t stand up to close analysis. Its proponents lack rational arguments, so they resort to street marches. They mobilise for campaigns against economic forums or visits by foreign leaders, and converge under an ad hoc umbrella. ‘Stop Bush Collective’ was the tag chosen by Sydney’s anti-APEC crew. The nearest thing they have to a guiding body is Peoples’ Global Action, ‘a worldwide coordination of resistances to the global market, a new alliance of struggle and mutual support’. PGA dispenses manifestos, action plans and ideological instruction, making liberal use of communications technology. The movement is for the most part non-violent, but has a sinister fringe. Lurking in the shadows are elements that could almost be described as paramilitary. They incite vandalism, civil disobedience and violence as a calculated strategy, hoping to discredit the institutional framework of trade talks. Riots are executed military-style, with operational code names like ‘N30’ (November 30: the Seattle protest). The authorities have no legitimacy in their eyes. Even elected governments are puppets of marauding corporations. These extremists owe little to traditions of peaceful protest like the civil rights or moratorium marches of the 1960s and 1970s. Their progenitors are far-left terror outfits of the 1970s - the Italian Red Brigades and German Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof). Operating in disguise, they specialise in running charges against police, a tactic called ‘black block (or bloc)’. They were the shock troops of Seattle and Genoa. In Melbourne, black block tactics were used by the anarchist groups ‘Mutiny’ and ‘Arterial Bloc’. Around 25 of them in spray painter suits and surgeons’ masks led charges against police. (Black blocking came out of the German ‘autonomen’ movement of the 1980s. Autonomen wore black during militant protests and solidarity demonstrations for the Red Army Faction.) As of 2007, radicals were close to winning the public relations war against international cooperation. It was just a matter of time before major cities, deterred by the prospect of violence, gave up hosting trade-related forums altogether. To their shame, many progressive journalists, always soft on the antics of left-wing demonstrators, conspired in casting police as the villains. And so APEC came to pass - not with a bang but a whimper. In retrospect, some argue the security arrangements were overblown. Anyone familiar with anti-globalisation militancy knows better. These clearly enunciated and aggressively enforced measures defused a ticking bomb. In Sydney, law enforcement won hands down. The forum’s logistics fell to the APEC 2007 Taskforce, a unit of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet with state-based branches like the APEC NSW Police Security Command. They chose a remarkably clear-sighted approach to the challenge before them. The taskforce drew together a security plan coordinating the dimensions of space, time and people. Security agencies were in full command of the space around APEC venues, including the Opera House, Government House, and hotels accommodating visiting leaders and their delegations. Taking advantage of the topography of Sydney’s CBD, a narrow stretch surrounded by water on three sides, critical blocks north of Bridge Street were sealed off by intense police presence and a steel fence. This barrier contained an inner security ring, the ‘declared area’, backed up by an outer ring, the ‘security zone’, where activities were monitored and if necessary managed by police intervention. Before the ‘Stop Bush’ march, police obtained a court order preventing protesters from entering the security zone. Riot squad officers skilfully confined marchers to a narrow corridor from the Town Hall to Hyde Park, just a few blocks away. These arrangements ensured there would be no repeat of Seattle, where protesters blocked streets leading to meeting venues, or Genoa where a secured ‘red zone’, aside from being breached, was so small that chanting mobs drowned out proceedings. APEC timeframes were geared to pre-emption. As the Prime Minister put it, ‘a decision was clearly taken - the right decision - that pre-emptive and forward action was better than retaliation …’ Months in advance, security agencies made contact with activist ringleaders, and compiled a list of ‘excluded persons’, such as the worst Melbourne G20 thugs. They were banned from the city centre. As the summit approached, a drumbeat of warnings issued from the Premier, the Deputy Premier, the Police Commissioner, the taskforce commander and others. Police expected trouble, and were authorised to respond in force. An ominous mobile water cannon patrolled the streets. Naturally enough, all of this drew the ire of civil libertarians and ‘experts’. A politics lecturer at Wollongong University, Dr Anthony Ashbolt, claimed the measures went too far. ‘You can, in fact, create the very circumstances you are trying to avoid’, he said. How wrong he was. Comments on the website of Resistance, an activist group, attest that the government’s firmness hit home: ‘Publicly explaining that the Stop Bush collective is aiming to hold a peaceful rally will make it easier to mount a political defence against government attempts to deny us our right to protest.’ While ‘Stop Bush’ organisers expected 20,000 marchers, only around 3000 showed up. From start to finish, crowd control was marked by zero tolerance of breaches and the highly visible presence of 3500 police and 1500 defence personnel. Anti-globalisation thuggery debuted in Seattle; Sydney is where law enforcement came into its own. That Sydney could pull off a meeting of world leaders, including George Bush, without carpets of shattered glass is quite an achievement (reminiscent in many ways of the pragmatic efficiency on display at the Olympics). It will no doubt be studied by law enforcement and security agencies all over the world. APEC 2007 was an instance of Sun Tzu’s foundation principle in The Art of War: ‘to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.’  TNC  22 September 2007                                                            Like to respond?                                                                                                       Top
  	August 2007 COMMENT: Iemma must reform local government At a time when Premier Peter Beattie is under fire for his bold plans to redraw Queensland’s council boundaries, Morris Iemma may be contemplating the proverb ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’. Still, the issue won’t go away. A groundswell of discontent is steadily rising across Sydney. The time has come for serious reform of local government, including council boundaries. That dangerous word ‘amalgamations’ is in the wind. It deserves a spot on Mr Iemma’s short-list of big second term items. The latest round of grumbling was occasioned by two related developments: release of the Department of Planning’s Local Government Performance Monitoring 2005-6 report and planning minister Frank Sartor‘s adoption of more powers to override under-performing councils under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act. The monitoring report says that in 2005-06 local councils determined some 105,000 development applications (DAs) with a total value of nearly $20 billion, a hefty slice of the state’s economy. The ‘mean gross time’ for determining a development application was 68 days (this figure includes the time taken to refer the matter to government agencies and the time taken by applicants to provide further information when requested). A total of twelve councils reported gross average determination times of 100 days or more. The following table, based on data in the report, sets out twenty councils with the highest gross average determination times (measured in days) and twenty councils with the highest number of DAs determined.                                         Highest 20 Councils                                (gross average time                                (total DAs determined) in days to determine DAs) 1. Leichhardt   185                                    1. Sydney   3,389 2. Strathfield   158                                    2. Lake Macquarie   3,075 3. Canterbury   152                                   3. Blacktown   2,998 4. Ashfield   130                                         4. Gosford   2,955 5. Botany Bay    115                                  5. Wyong   2,561 6. Port Stephens   113                              6. Shoalhaven   2,544 7. Woollahra   111                                      7. Baulkham Hills   2,484 8. Wollongong   106                                   8. Newcastle   2,230 9. Holroyd   102                                          9. Penrith   2,110   10. Upper Hunter   101                            10. Hornsby   2,051 11. Great Lakes   101                               11. Liverpool   2,040 12. Pittwater   100                                    12. Fairfield   1,865 13. Rockdale   98                                       13. Coffs Harbour   1,756 14. Walgett   97                                         14. Port Stephens   1,738 15. Eurobodalla   89                                  15. Bankstown   1,692 16. Newcastle   89                                    16. Ku-ring-gai    1,651 17. Kogarah   89                                        17. Wollongong   1,625 18. Shellharbour   88                                18. Sutherland    1,610 19. Warringah   88                                    19. Warringah   1,543 20. Young   88                                            20.  Parramatta   1,531   Interestingly, there is no apparent relationship between determination times and the volume of applications handled. For instance, the slowest five councils, Leichhardt, Strathfield, Canterbury, Ashfield and Botany Bay don’t make the top twenty with the highest output. This is prima facie evidence of serious inefficiency in many council administrations. And the determination times are only averages, so many residents and businesses will have endured far worse service than suggested by the figures. It’s not uncommon for residents of Leichhardt, for example, to experience delays of up to twelve months for a determination concerning structural alterations to a house. As Sartor’s spokeswoman pointed out, applicants are in large part ‘mums and dads waiting to add a car port or make minor alterations to their homes’. Why do some councils take, on average, around six months to process their paperwork? Councils have long been a concern for the state government. On his accession to the premiership, Iemma confronted a sluggish economy widely linked to the property market slump. He declared New South Wales ‘open for business’ and started hacking away at as much red tape as possible. As minister, Sartor pushed through a series of measures impacting on council approval powers. Last year the government passed amendments to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act which empowered the minister to appoint an administrator or panel to oversee planning developments without a council’s consent. This month these powers were strengthened when DA determination times were added to factors the minister can take into account. Naturally enough, a lot of mayors and councillors are nervous. Some reacted to perceived encroachments on their turf with radical schemes. City of Sydney Councillor John McInerney called for the creation of a ‘super-council’ to run Sydney’s metropolitan transport system, airport and big planning projects. This so-called ‘Central Sydney Authority’ would consist of the mayors of Leichhardt, Woollahra, Marrickville, North Sydney, Randwick and Botany Bay. The superimposition of a new layer of government on to existing structures, however, would surely be a recipe for chaos. Nevertheless, McInerney was on to something. The multiplicity of Sydney’s local government jurisdictions hampers economic efficiency, and councils are too small to deliver effective administration. The Sydney Chamber of Commerce noted McInerney’s proposal, and backed calls ‘for a major rationalisation of the city’s municipal governance’, saying the existing ‘clumsy arrangement’ was stifling development. Chamber executive director Patricia Forsythe said ‘Sydney is spectacularly over governed with 43 local government areas and over 400 local government politicians’. Compare Sydney’s mosaic to Greater London Council, or New York’s five boroughs. The skills base available for local government service is spread too thinly, and information technology systems can’t be brought to bear on a large scale. That makes it so much harder to juggle the complex economic, social and environmental forces that shape a modern metropolis. No wonder the minister needs to intervene. More importantly, councils are increasingly vulnerable to the electoral and media techniques that drive pressure group politics. When asked about her council’s dismal ranking, Leichhardt Mayor Alice Murphy claimed inner suburbs are different. ‘Especially in the inner city and the inner west where neighbouring developments really affect people’, she told local newspaper The Village Voice, ‘just because of the fact that we all live so close together’. Boiled down, she means the balance of power rests with development opponents, not development proponents. We hear a lot about councils captured by unscrupulous developers, but less about those captured by community activists and naysayers. The smaller a council’s population, the more vulnerable it is to disaffected elements acting alone or in highly organised action groups. Many councillors acquiesce in bogus claims that these groups represent ‘the community’, and abdicate their responsibilities as elected officials. Sydney Council even accords them quasi official status. The Council’s website lists a series of activist groups as if they were branches of its administration. Cheered on by green-tinged local media, resident activists are adept at using the techniques of political campaigning, like advertising, letterboxing and public meetings, along with websites, email and mobile phones to influence, delay or arrest the progress of development proposals. Nor do they hesitate to distort facts and spread fears about sham environmental or health impacts. As currently constituted, councils rarely have the resources to resist hysterical campaigns of this type. Short of intervention by the minister, councils can be saved from capture by expanding population catchments enough to dilute the clout of special interests. This means amalgamations. Admittedly, this is easier said than done. But the government will have to confront the problem sooner or later. Why not at the start of a new term?  TNC  8 August 2007                                                                                Like to respond?                                                                                           Top
  	June 2007 COMMENT: Listen to Clover and Sydney’s over Unlike other major cities, greater Sydney’s municipal administration is fractured into 38 separate local government areas. One of the smallest in area is the Council of the City of Sydney, which attracts disproportionate attention because it covers the city’s spectacular central business district and some trendy inner-city precincts like Potts Point, Paddington, Surry Hills, Darlinghurst, Newtown, Pyrmont and Glebe. It is a strange feature of Sydney’s civic discourse that the elected head of the council, who glorifies in the title Lord Mayor while most other municipal leaders make do with Mayor, tends to be regarded as a spokesperson for the whole city. This is noticeable on occasions like the Olympic Games, welcoming parades or visits by foreign dignitaries. In fact the City’s boundaries contain a residential population of about 150,000, so the Lord Mayor represents no more than around 3.5 per cent of Sydney’s 4.2 million people. Sydney Lord Mayors have always argued this underrates their role, given that the City is such an important employment hub. That is open to question, but the working population is only around 350,000 in any event, or 8.3 per cent of Sydney‘s total population. None of this deters the current Lord Mayor, Clover Moore (pictured). She is always ready to don the mantle of spokesperson for all Sydney. And yet the demographics of the City’s voting constituency makes her an inapt person for that role. City residents are very different than the average Sydneysider. Just consider this: 40 per cent are aged between 20 and 35. The median age of 31.3 years is one of the lowest for any local government area in NSW. 53.3 per cent aged 15 and over have never married. 45 per cent live in one-person households. 45 per cent were born overseas. Of those aged 15 and over, 57.9 per cent possess a post-school educational qualification including 37.1 per cent with a bachelor degree or higher. 47.2 per cent are employed in high skill occupations (managers, administrators or professionals). Almost 30 per cent walk to work. One third use public transport to go to work and 25 per cent drive a car to work. The median weekly income for those aged 15 and over of $605 is 35.9 per cent higher than the median metropolitan Sydney individual income. 15.3 per cent earn over $1500 a week as individuals, compared to only 6.7 per cent of residents of Sydney metropolitan area. All of which brings us to the Lord Mayor’s most recent foray as Sydney’s saviour. The content of her address launching ‘Sustainable Sydney 2030’ was entirely predictable. An edited version appeared on the 6 June features page of the Sydney Morning Herald, whose own horizons don’t stretch much further than the City’s turf. ‘Our thoughts of the future’ declared Clover, ‘are challenged by catastrophic predictions of global warming’. She then lays out an agenda that just happens to suit the demographic profile of her voters. The spectacle of community and political activists hijacking climate change for their own purposes is all too familiar. The inner city is and always has been an arc of high-density development. And yet many of today’s educated and articulate residents clamour for a historic transformation. Resident action groups proliferate along with high-minded rhetoric about environmental protection. Their real motive, of course, is to combine the locational advantages of inner-city living with the enhanced property values that accompany open space and parklands. In this cause, the Lord Mayor is their servant and mouthpiece. ‘Some of the challenges that must be addressed’ she says, ‘are air quality, living amenity, water, waste and open space‘. Inevitably, her address homed in on the state government’s largest City development proposals: ‘… we are already grappling with population and congestion pressures, and planning of large new urban renewal developments such as Green Square, the Broadway brewery site and East Darling Harbour‘. Each of these concerns the renewal of derelict industrial sites. The underlying purpose of Sustainable Sydney 2030 is to oppose such projects, despite the rhetorical wrapping. Other elements of Clover’s vision also have scant relevance outside the inner sanctum. Her remarks about transport mean nothing to the vast majority of Sydneysiders who either prefer or need to drive to work. Talk of ‘integrated transport systems, including better and safer pedestrian and cycling routes’ adds nothing to the broader Sydney debate on how to ease traffic congestion. Nor does she have anything serious to say about the challenge of economic development and job creation in the city’s greater western region. Since most of her constituency is employed, affluent and highly educated, her emphasis is on ‘how we might attract, and keep, skilled innovative workers’. This is a rather soft objective, so she can afford the nonsense of quoting British urbanist Charles Landry, ‘who argues that successful cities of the 21st century will be “living works of art where citizens can involve and engage themselves” in the transformation of their city‘. Families in western Sydney grappling with housing affordability will no doubt be reassured that ‘New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said at the recent C40 conference, tackling climate change is “the only pro-growth strategy for the long term”’. The sub-text of these references is that Clover doesn’t care for pro-growth strategies that deliver benefits to most of Sydney’s people. This points to a worrying blind spot in the thinking of contemporary urban thinkers and planners. Rarely does Australian discussion about urban development escape the confines of anti-growth environmentalism on the one hand, and special pleading of the ‘creative class’ variety on the other. Proponents of urban growth are usually dismissed as greedy developers or their agents. Even advocates for western Sydney, a low density region with social and economic drivers favouring suburbanisation, seem beholden to the conventional wisdom. When David Borger, Lord Mayor (another one) of Parramatta and newly elected MP, spoke out against the relative paucity of cultural educational facilities in the west - a valid complaint in itself - he framed the discussion in ‘creative economy’ terms. At least this earned him space on the Herald’s features page. Thankfully, there is a fresh alternative on the horizon. Australia’s urban debates will benefit from the appearance of American urbanist Joel Kotkin’s new thinking on ‘opportunity urbanism’, which he proposes as an emerging paradigm for the twenty-first century. Kotkin’s ideas on cities as engines of social mobility should go along way towards illuminating the blind spot that obscures our sight of the real Sydney.  TNC  25 June 2007                                                                                Like to respond?                                                                                           Top
  	May 2007 COMMENT: The new found land solution Has there been a breakthrough on the housing affordability front? We have long argued that the affordability crisis comes down to one overwhelming factor. Planning authorities haven’t been releasing enough residential lots to keep the land component of house prices low. Along with the Institute of Public Affairs, the authors of the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and others, we maintain the crisis can, in large part, be sheeted home to urban consolidation, the official policy of most state planning departments over recent decades. Driven by misguided economic, social and environmental concerns, planning authorities have sought to impose restrictive urban boundaries and urban infill at the expense of suburban growth. Across the country, the result has been escalating land prices. The small band of dissenters have, on the whole, had to contend with political and media indifference at best, or outright hostility at worst. In Sydney, proponents or suburban growth have had to grapple with two major obstacles: a state government set firmly on the urban consolidation track by former premier Bob Carr, and a leading newspaper of record, the Sydney Morning Herald, with a rigid ultra-green editorial line. The Herald has been known to depict outer suburban residents as polluting Neanderthals who live in gaudy ‘McMansions’ and drive petrol-guzzling FWDs. It may be that both obstacles are starting to melt away, however. We were pleasantly surprised by the different tone of two articles appearing in the Herald’s 7 May edition, written or co-written by Catherine Munro. ‘Great housing land if anyone could afford it’, which appeared on the front page, came as close as the Herald ever has to endorsing the land supply argument. ‘As debates over Sydney's home affordability crisis continue’, wrote Munro, ‘the supply of new houses on the city's fringe is at historic lows of 2300 a year compared with a 30-year average of 7500’. The article catalogues a series of complaints against the state government’s exorbitant infrastructure levies. This is quite a departure, since developer levies to fund social infrastructure and environmental protection were a mainstay of the Herald’s grudging attitudes to suburban development. In the second article, ‘Levies halt the flood of housing’, two of the country’s largest developers get to make the case that developer levies are slowing the release of more lots on to the market. And they aren’t even depicted as greedy ogres. These interesting pieces were followed on 11 May by another Munro article highlighting the Housing Industry Association’s recent HIA-APM Land Monitor survey, which reported that Sydney land prices rose 11.7 per cent, and the cost of land was 57 per cent of the overall value of a new house, compared with 48 per cent on average across Australia. Munro’s closing comment says a lot about her diagnosis of the problem: ‘In NSW, the State Government has established a Growth Centres Commission to speed up the process of zoning and planning new land on Sydney’s outskirts’. The Herald’s new found interest in land supply is matched by a perceptible change of emphasis on the part of the NSW Government. Unfortunately, the Government’s overall planning blueprint, the City of Cities plan, still dictates that only 30 to 40 per cent of Sydney’s future housing needs will be built on greenfields sites. This is an artificially low proportion. Nevertheless, Planning Minister Frank Sartor is cranking up the release of lots in two designated ‘growth centres’ on the city’s south-western and north-western outskirts. Despite contrary noises prior to the March general election, Sartor has clearly taken the land supply argument to heart. The question is whether this flawed aspect of the City of Cities plan is destined for a rethink. Hopefully, we are witnessing signs of better things to come.    TNC  22 May 2007                                                                                Like to respond?                                                                                           Top
  	April 2007  COMMENT: Trafficking in illusions Traffic congestion. After real estate values, it’s Sydney’s greatest obsession. Dramas like the Cross City Tunnel and the Lane Cove Tunnel kept us entertained for weeks. And some of the few animated moments during the recent state election were about none other than traffic. Sydneysiders didn’t give a toss about disruptive visits from foreign dignitaries like Vice President Dick Cheney or the majestic liners Queen Mary and QE II. Just give us free-flowing traffic. Most pundits come to the issue from an auto-phobic perspective: there are too many cars on the road And every other month, it seems, another report hits the deck warning that the city is headed for traffic Armageddon. The latest couple of installments have done nothing to lower the temperature. A federal Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics (BTRE) report says the average delay due to congestion in Sydney will grow from 0.285 minutes per kilometre in 1990 to 0.374 minutes this year, and to 0.527 minutes by 2020. In terms of time wasted, vehicle operating costs and pollution, the bureau found the social cost of congestion will rise from $3.5 billion to $7.8 billion between 2005 and 2020. Meanwhile, according to NRMA (National Roads and Motoring Association) research, 57 per cent of Sydney businesses say their fleets spend up to four hours longer in traffic each week. More than 80 per cent of businesses observed traffic congestion to increase over the last year. Further, 12 per cent of businesses say their annual operating costs increased by as much as $20,000 because of more time spent on the road. These reports got more attention than usual when the NSW Minister for Roads, Eric Roozendaal, felt it necessary to retract his election campaign comment that Sydney’s congestion is no worse than it was 10 years ago. Congestion is by definition bad. It’s frustrating. People feel it’s contrary to the natural order of things. They will readily blame either the government or the relevant state agency - in this case the Roads and Traffic Authority - for stuffing things up. This sort of mindset can easily foster the illusion that there is a clear solution, if only the government had the brains or courage to see it. For some, like progressive urban planners and environmentalists, it’s all a simple matter of dragging people from their cars and onto public transport. Their particular illusion is that masses of people can’t wait to ditch their cars and hop onto buses and trains. If only the government would build a better network, deliver more services and introduce convenient timetables, traffic congestion would be history. Unfortunately for them, things are more complicated. Using the 2004 household travel survey, the NSW Transport and Population Data Centre has found that over 24 years, peak traffic periods have expanded from 8am to 9am to 7.30am to 9.30am, and from 3pm to 6pm to 2.30pm to 7pm. The Centre explains that not all drivers at those times were engaged in essential trips like commuting to work. About one in five trips in the morning peak related to ‘discretionary activities’ such as shopping. A significant proportion of these trips were made by housewives, retirees and the unemployed. At 3.30pm around 38 per cent of trips were discretionary and in the second afternoon peak at around 5.30pm more than 40 per cent were discretionary. Sydney’s traffic peaks have been profoundly affected by changing patterns of workforce participation, like higher rates of women in part-time and casual work, and demographic changes like the aging of the population. Add to these rising affluence, making car ownership, and multi-car ownership, more affordable and the growing dispersion of residential, commercial and employment locations throughout the greater urban region. Only 13 per sent of Sydneysiders work in the CBD and greater western Sydney has achieved 75 per cent employment containment. These denser, ad hoc travel patterns can’t be serviced by public transport. And the state can’t afford a transport network that is anywhere near as efficient and convenient as car use. Little wonder then, that when surveyed, most Sydneysiders preferred their cars even if the standard of public transport improved. There’s no turning back to the 1960s. While some urge the carrot of better public transport, others raise the stick of penalising car use. According to the BTRE report, ‘if a pricing mechanism could be put in place that obliged all motorists to base their travel decisions not only on their private costs but also on the additional costs imposed on others ... then transport choices would alter.’ This brings us to the holy grail of urban planners: a London-style congestion charge. This was a special gift to Londoners from Lord Mayor ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone. As Nico McDonald points out, however, the charge isn’t such a success: ‘More generally, the Congestion Charge doesn’t appear to be designed to reduce driving in central London during the busiest periods. For instance, drivers, such as commuters, pay a single daily charge. Once paid, there is no incentive to avoid the charging zone or period when driving back from work. In additional, drivers are able to pay the Charge for a year ahead, which incentivises them to use their car rather than other modes of transport.’ Unpalatable as it is to planners and activists, the solution has to include more and better road construction. The NRMA will be dismissed as a self-interested motoring association, but the organisation is right when it says ‘a transport corridor is needed along the northern beaches, which combines public transport options and the upgrade of local roads’, and ‘Sydney also needs to act now to ease traffic around Port Botany and south and south-west Sydney by completing the F6 and M4 extensions’. Sydney’s freeway and orbital motorway networks are integrated systems. Failure to complete certain sections renders the whole network less efficient. A case in point is the M4 East, the ‘missing link’ of the M4, a lateral east-west axis across the city. Plans to complete the M4, which now terminates at Strathfield, but is meant to terminate close to the city centre, is on hold due to community opposition. Community opposition should be distinguished from public opposition, however. The M4 East corridor crosses the greenie heartland of Sydney’s inner-west, where a highly organised coalition of resident action groups, Greens, local councillors and MPs is always ready to mobilise for action. These activists are really concerned about property values, but will resort to tired old slogans to fight their cause. One of these is the well rehearsed line that road construction never works because more roads just mean more cars. But this depends on the circumstances. According to the international consultancy Demographia, for instance, in the 1980s Houston, Texas had the worst traffic congestion in the United States but reduced it by 45 per cent after building more road capacity. Few other cities across the world have tried it. Perhaps it’s time for a novel thought. Let’s reduce congestion by building more state of the art roads. This comment was republished by On Line Opinion, Australia's e-journal of social and political debate.    TNC  23 April 2007                                                                                Like to respond?                                                                                           Top
  	March 2007 Exclusive: Rory Robertson is wrong on house prices, by Alan Moran Australians are heavily focussed on house prices. As well as their home, most people recognise the family house as their most valuable asset. The “haves”, those who own their homes are keen to see their worth maintained. The “have-nots”, mainly younger people, are constantly looking at house price levels that are depressingly receding away from their affordability horizons. As renters, the “have-nots” also recognise the increased costs they are shelling out for a roof over their heads. There are those who argue that it is only demand that is forcing up house prices. The SMH and the Age’s property writers have been suckered into this theory which is being popularised by Macquarie Bank’s Rory Robertson. Mr Robertson thinks the reason why house price have gone up in some places but not others is because some places are “sexy”. He defines these as those cities he likes: Australia is rather flattered by this perspective because all our capital cities are sexy. They are joined by US cities including New York, LA, San Francisco, and Honolulu, as well as British cities like London, Bournemouth (Fawlty Towers territory) and Cardiff (famous only when the Wallabies or All Blacks visit!). New Zealand, with Auckland also scores a Robertson rose as does Vancouver in Canada.  Those cities Macquarie Bank considers to be “dull” include bustling Toronto; Houston the world’s space industry capital; Cosmopolitan Quebec; and Dallas, one of the premier energy and high tech centres in the world.  He also argues, “Important coastal cities are expensive everywhere”. Presumably those that aren’t expensive – including Halifax, Nova Scotia; Toronto (on a Great Lake) New Orleans and Melbourne (that’ll be Melbourne, Florida) as well as Houston, are not in Mr Robertson’s view “important”.   Like Beauty, sexy is in the eye of the beholder. What really distinguishes those cities that have affordable housing prices from other cities is the supply of land on which the authorities allow new houses to be built. Cities like Houston, Dallas and Atlanta have house/land packages roughly half the price of Melbourne despite growing faster than any Australian city. This is because government in those cities does not restrict land releases for housing. And, on the basis of urbanisation, Australia has the lowest level of urbanisation in the world – in Australia 99.7 per cent of our land has no urban development. If there were no restrictions on land for building, it would cost under $50-70,000 for a fully serviced block on the fringe of Melbourne and under $100,000 on the fringes of Sydney. Yet, according to the Urban Development Institute, the average price is $145,000 in Melbourne, having doubled since 2001, and $300,000 in Sydney. In NSW current levels at under 30,000 per annum compare with 50,000 in the early 1990s indicating that there is no building constraint. The figures tell the Sydney story – the number of lots the government has allowed to be made available has fallen and, Lo and behold, price has increased. The same pattern can be seen throughout Australia.   Another element of demand that is often blamed for high house prices is interest rates. Interest rates are important for house prices but they will only inflate prices if supply cannot be increased. Other high value consumer durables like yachts, light planes, and Mercedes cars did not increase in price with lower interest rates. Just as in cities like Houston, Dallas, Atlanta and a host of others in the US, this was because supply is flexible and not regulated by government. Alan Moran is Director of the Deregulation Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs.    TNC  18 March 2007                                                                   Like to comment?                                                                                                   Top
  	February 2007 COMMENT: Nimbys fortify their coastal strongholds The mid-north and far-north coasts of New South Wales boast some of the most charming shorelines in the developed world. And for regions offering so many natural attractions, they are also amongst the most sparsely populated. The reasons are well known. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, coastal townships and villages like Forster, Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour and Byron Bay became the chosen refuge of retirees, ‘alternative life-stylers’, so-called ‘sea-changers’ and others hoping to escape the Sydney rat-race. Byron Bay, in particular, became a sanctuary for pot-smoking - and cultivating - hippies, ‘ferals’, dole-bludgers and assorted celebrities from the entertainment industry. Some of these centres became famous for their laid-back, counter-culture ambience, and, over time, for something else - a ferocious resolve on the part of residents to stop more people joining them. Having acquired their slice of paradise on earth, they were determined to keep it all for themselves. Love, peace and the brotherhood of man were fine, so long as the brothers stayed in Sydney. A distinct type of political activism took root in these areas. Diverse action groups sprung up with a singular focus - to block development. Any proposal showing the slightest promise of attracting residents and commerce would be opposed vehemently. These activists, and their elected representatives on local city and shire councils, became adept at dressing up instances of selfish exclusivity with the weasel words of environmental protection. Their success is clear for all to see. The far-north coast region covers an area of 10,293 square kilometres but contains only 228,000 people. The mid-north coast region, roughly double the size, only 333,400. Just consider that these figures translate to a population density in the far north coast of 22 people per square kilometre. By comparison, the population densities of the UK and France are 244 and 109 respectively. Judging by the recently released planning ‘strategies’ for these regions, there is little political appetite for a challenge to the nimbys (not in my backyard). After all, this is a difficult election year for the state government. The Far North Coast Strategy plans for a colossal - wait for it - population increase of 60,400 people over 25 years. And the Mid North Coast Strategy? No less than 91,000 over 25 years. You will find more people living in a single Shanghai neighbourhood. These numbers are pathetic. We are talking about regions that could, if unlocked, attract some of the brightest and most dynamic people in the country, not to mention the world. The strategies amount to nothing less than abject capitulation to the nimbys. They are very odd in another respect. Both fret over the fact that the regional populations are aging, and yet this is simply accepted as a fact of life. There is no sense of urgency to replenish the stock with younger blood. According to the far-north coast strategy, the median age is projected to increase from 39 to 51 years, due to more than doubling of the population aged 65 and over. Similarly, the median age on the mid-north coast is expected to increase from 41 years in 2001 to 55 in 2031, and, again, the population aged 65 years and over will more than double. So what should be done? ‘Currently 80 percent of all dwellings in the region(s) are detached houses’ say the strategies, ’but with demographic change and lower occupancy ratios there will need to be a greater proportion of multi-unit dwellings in future to provide accessible and adaptable housing choices’. Prepare for pensioners. If these strategies are implemented, the northern coast will end up ‘terra nullius’. Even nimbys die eventually. The residential settlement pattern promoted by the strategies is based on the underlying premise that things mustn’t change too much. Consider this typical planning euphemism for a policy of mediocre growth: ‘The Regional Strategy identifies and promotes a settlement pattern that protects environmental values and natural resources while utilising and developing the existing network of major urban centres, reinforcing village character, and requiring efficient use of existing services and major transport routes [emphasis added].’ In other words, we’ll keep the masses out. This paragraph also lets drop the voguish planning word ‘village’, code for ‘not suburban’. Since suburbs, and detached houses on sizeable blocks, are the preferred destination for young couples with children, this policy will guarantee the coast’s geriatric future. Nor do the strategies have much of interest to say about employment. The emphasis is on tourism, a convenient industry catering to people who don’t stay. The Sydney Morning Herald’s editorial on the strategies, having described them as ‘laudable’, ends on a rather incoherent note. ‘The State Government must back the warm sentiments of the coastal strategies with the cold hard cash to underwrite the employment and services needed to attract and retain people of working age. Otherwise the future of the NSW coast, north and south, will be only as the world’s longest retirement village’. Notwithstanding the Herald’s reversion to 1970s-style Keynesian pump priming, economic dynamism is built on different foundations in the twenty-first century. It is built on low taxes, inflation and interest rates, and growing concentrations of people with assets and disposable incomes. These are the conditions in which the modern, predominantly service economy thrives. But the strategies are designed to prevent such concentrations. While they see centres like Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie emerging as more sophisticated economic hubs, complete with high rise office blocks, it would take a much larger population base to underwrite the transformation of these sleepy towns. All of this is a pity. If not for heavy handed restrictions on market forces, alluring places like Coffs, Port Macquarie and Byron could become important national cities with international reputations as nodes in a network of service industries - like education and information technology - stretching from Sydney to Brisbane. According to the Herald, Byron Shire Mayor Jan Barham, a Green, ‘welcomed the strategy as consistent with the council’s vision for her area’. What a surprise. The government should be concerned about that endorsement. When the Greens support a planning strategy, it’s bound to be a dud. This comment was republished by On Line Opinion, Australia's e-journal of social and political debate.    TNC  18 February 2007                                                                     Like to respond?                                                                                                Top
  	December 2006 - January 2007 Greens hammer workers' anvil + voice crying in the wilderness Greens hammer workers’ anvil Many Labor activists have long lived with the assumption that their aims are more or less consistent with those of the Greens. This era of complacency is rapidly coming to an end, however. The climate change debate is opening up fissures that won’t be closed. The Greens’ irrational and uncompromising prescriptions are just not compatible with the interests of workers. Unions are beginning to recoil from the grave ditch into which environmentalists, inside and outside the ALP, are leading them. This low key clash came to a head over the proposed coal mine at Anvil Hill in the Hunter Valley. Newcastle is the Hunter’s capital, so it’s inevitable that the city’s civic officials should squabble over the region’s planning controversies. By all accounts, Newcastle City Council’s meeting on 7 November was quite an occasion. Councillors pushed through an extreme motion crammed with demands on the NSW government along these lines: 1. A cap on coal exports from Newcastle at existing levels. 2. An independent inquiry into the environmental, social and economic sustainability of the current coal industry and proposed expansion of the Hunter Valley coal industry. 3. Pending such an inquiry, a moratorium on new coal mines at Anvil Hill and elsewhere in the Hunter Valley and Gunnedah Basin. 4. Mandatory renewable energy target of 25% by 2020, with 20% by 2014 as a first step, in keeping with targets set by the South Australian Government. 5. A levy on the coal industry to fund the transition to sustainability in the Hunter beyond coal. The councillors have plenty of gall, if little else. Having adopted this radical scorched-earth policy, they invited trade union representatives to address the council at ‘a public voice session’. In other words, the prisoner was allowed some final words before slipping on the noose. It’s unclear whether any union reps accepted the invitation. The motion preceded a controversial decision by Judge Nicola Pain of the Land and Environment Court to reject the developer’s environmental assessment for the Anvil Hill project (see this edition’s editorial). Of course, it’s all the Greens’ handiwork. Greens councillor Michael Osborne put up the motion. When the City of Newcastle votes to abolish the Hunter’s chief economic mainspring - the NSW coal industry is worth $9 billion - then the lunatics have truly taken over the asylum. As we have argued, closing down the coal industry will do nothing to mitigate global carbon emissions, but it would certainly undermine Australia’s international efforts to promote clean coal technologies. Sadly, two of the lead characters in this farce were Labor councillors, Marilyn Eade and Paul Scobie. They voted with the Greens to form a 7-2 majority in favour of the motion. Presumably they are familiar with the Hunter’s unemployment rate. Presumably they know a substantial proportion of the Hunter’s working people depend on the coal industry. Presumably they know the Anvil Hill mine will bring at least 240 jobs to Muswellbrook directly and more indirectly. If not, they should pay more attention to their federal Labor member, Joel Fitzgibbon. ‘Extreme environmentalists are launching a jihad against the industry in an attempt to close it down’, he said while denouncing the motion, ‘and the community must be told the other side of the story’. That is how any self-respecting Labor supporter should respond to the current wave of climate change hysteria. This episode demonstrates that Labor has truly reached ‘a fork in the road’. The choice is between Green propaganda and economic reality. Inner-city residents are familiar with grandstanding Green councillors. Their motions are a pointless indulgence in localities with no economic link to whatever industry they are demonising that week. But when it happens in the heart of a region where thousands of people depend on the industry under attack, we have reached a crisis in the quality of our civic discourse.
  	Voice crying in the wilderness                                                                                                                                                                              Top Local newspapers around Sydney’s inner-west are, on the whole, little more than ad sheets and mouth-pieces for the latest resident action group to come along. The publishers of familiar publications like The Glebe, The Courier and The Village Voice believe their commercial interests lie in embracing any or every anti-development cause celebre. They calculate that such campaigns are close to their readers’ hearts and pockets, since it's mostly about preserving property values - even when dressed up in green mumbo-jumbo. As for blue-collar jobs, they belong on another planet. Heroic struggles over Callan Park (Rozelle), the Bells site (Balmain), the water police site (Pyrmont) and the White Bay cement terminal have long filled the pages of these papers. The latest controversy concerns a proposal by Baileys Marine to build and operate a marine fuel depot and supply facility at White Bay (the cement terminal was knocked on the head). Action groups are forming, outrage is being expressed. Amongst all the predictable anti-development babble, it is refreshing, and somewhat surprising, to see a ray of common sense from a writer for a less well-known inner-west publication, Ciao Magazine. Russell Edwards sent a pointed letter to local publishers which, alas, didn’t get much of a run, but which deserves a wide readership. Today I was handed a flyer about Bailey’s at Rozelle Market, which I read. Though it didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t heard before. Similarly worded material is produced whenever anyone wants to do anything at all in Balmain. Producing anti-growth flyers is probably its only growth industry. Or the only one which is tolerated. And it is never short of funds or zeal. Once upon time a group of people brought into “working-class” Balmain and Rozelle because they liked its ambience. But as soon they got here they found they didn’t like the “working” bit. Or the “class” bit either. Pretty soon that was sorted, the prices they were able to pay for real estate saw to that. So they set about getting rid of all the industry they didn’t like – especially on the waterfront. Real estate interests – developers and their supplicant politicians – pricked up their ears… And responded by closing down the port. That made sense too, after all that land was exceptionally valuable. The last successful “anti industry” campaign (at White Bay) was run by (surprise!) a real estate agent. Since there is so much money at stake you will hear from many people about Bailey’s, and almost all of them will use the word “community”. I do hope that you – whose job it is to assess these plans – are able to understand just how abused the word has become. And just how disingenuous these people are. And consider the interests of the people of NSW as well. Those who are complaining do not speak for everyone, even all of Balmain. I live just on the other side of Iron Cove, so maybe my view is irrelevant anyway. But not everyone has a twisted, vested interest in watching this state become any more of economic basket-case than it is fast becoming. A situation accelerated by timid politicians listening to professional nay-sayers like the ones who organised the petition I was handed. That their interest in the price of their properties happily coincides with the interests of residential property developers should be noted – by you at least. How true. And yet Mr Edwards is but a voice crying in the wilderness.  TNC  19 December 2006                                                                                                                                                                           Top
  	November 2006 COMMENT: Urban growth - the escape from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis The classics of art, literature and cinema are so easily reinterpreted to suit contemporary fads and fashions. Take George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is now commonly held up by many academics and writers as an attack on corporatised, ‘neo-liberal’, capitalism when it’s really about the horrors of Stalinist communism. This sort of revisionism was recently invoked during a minor eruption, of all places, on the letters page of the Australian Financial Review. On 7 November the AFR carried a story about the NSW government’s Six Cities initiative, a strand of its broader Sydney metropolitan strategy. Spearheaded by the Cities Task Force, the initiative represents a plan to turn the spotlight from Sydney’s CBD to outlying regional and suburban nodes including Penrith, Liverpool, Parramatta, Gosford, Wollongong and Newcastle. The initiative is a commendable, and long overdue, effort to reorient resources towards the greater Sydney region’s fastest growing centres. Quoted in the AFR article, the Taskforce’s head, Chris Johnson, says the initiative is part of a global shift towards polycentric cities with a ‘rich combination of densities and uses’ right across the metropolitan area. Johnson’s appraisal of the global trend is spot on. The American urbanist Joel Kotkin has written extensively on the continuing drift towards lower density free-standing homes, and how this is transforming the spatial distribution of commercial activity across the world. ‘They are not mere bedroom communities with malls’, writes Kotkin of the new suburbs springing up across the US, ‘but boast well-developed business parks, town centres and, in some cases ... a large amount of well-preserved, natural open space’. ‘It’s about getting confidence into these (six) cities’, explained Johnson. His next statement reflected basic common sense: ‘jobs are the driver of what a city centre should be about’. Sense is not so common, it seems. The following day, Johnson was blasted on the AFR‘s letters page. ‘Tell that to Manchester, Rheims or Prague’, wrote Andrew Woodhouse of the Australian Heritage Institute from Sydney’s ritzy, harbourside Potts Point. ‘[E]ach of these vibrant, pro-resident, regional cities is not based on jobs growth’, pontificates Woodhouse, ‘but on a symbiosis between residential activity including parks, pools, live theatre, concerts, art galleries, cafes, markets, their heritage and sympathetic business activities’. Inverting Johnson, Woodhouse asserted ‘jobs are the end of a living city, not a driving cause’. The average high school student will spot the flaw in this portentous outburst. Penrith, Liverpool and Gosford have a lot going for them, but how comparable are they to the venerable cities of Manchester, Rheims and Prague? The analogy is simply facile. But Woodhouse does little to redeem himself. He follows up with a series of blatantly false propositions. ‘The post-World War II concept of a city proposed by Johnson is a doughnut with a dead hole in the centre and dormitory suburbs on the fringe’, he says, ‘an abysmal failure and the nemesis of Sydney, which is now resembling a crumbling canyon of inhuman towers and unsafe alleys…’ It’s hard to believe Woodhouse is even conscious. While it is true that some post-war American cities experienced declining, decaying ‘downtowns’ accompanied by flight to the suburbs, the opposite happened here. Beginning in the late 1960s, Sydney’s inner-suburban core experienced a revolution. Working class slums became fashionable, trendy villages. Middle class professionals poured in and workers moved out - to the suburbs. Hardly a ‘dead hole’. There isn’t much dead about the CBD either. Over the last twenty years central Sydney emerged as a much touted ‘global city’, one of the south-west Pacific’s most dynamic business hubs. This is where our opening reference to the manipulation of artistic classics comes in. Following his hand-wringing about Sydney’s crumbling canyons, inhuman towers and unsafe alleys, Woodhouse ends with a flourish - ‘all foreseen in Fritz Lang’s 1927 movie, Metropolis - and a vision happening on Johnson’s watch’. This is laughable. For the uninitiated, Metropolis, a German silent movie era classic, presents a nightmare vision of a sinister, futuristic city where an opulent elite live in towering skyscrapers far removed from the mass of ‘robotized worker-slaves’ in congested slums below. Woodhouse has it back to front again. Lang’s horror wasn’t evoked by prosperous, sprawling, low-density cities like Sydney. Lang belonged to the post-World War I generation of European artists who reacted against some ugly features of western life, including the dirty, tightly-packed industrial cities thrown up by the industrial revolution. One such city was Lang’s hometown - Berlin. In Cities In Civilisation, urban writer Peter Brooks describes inter-war Berlin as ‘the greatest rental barracks in the world: one of the most densely built and overcrowded cities to be found anywhere, with horrifying problems of poor housing and poor public health’. Berlin’s high-density slums, typically seven-story brick tenements (Mietskaserne), were a legacy of the city’s meteoric late nineteenth-century rise as an industrial powerhouse. By 1927 Berlin’s class disparities were widened by economic collapse following defeat in World War I and the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty. This was the backdrop to Lang’s Metropolis. When it comes to absurd analogies, Woodhouse is nothing if not consistent. The irony, from his perspective, is that the post-World War II shift to suburbanisation was as much a reaction against the old industrial city as Lang‘s artistic vision. Post-war prosperity, widespread car ownership, better road networks, easy credit and improving telecommunications offered working families an appealing alternative to dormitory housing near the industrial core. They offered an opportunity for comfortable home ownership. This was the escape route from Metropolis. State governments and planners can do nothing better than promote viable urban growth. It should be obvious that sustainable expansion is a function of economic development, particularly employment opportunities near new residential concentrations. Otherwise dynamic growth will be scarred by the familiar signs of social dysfunction. That is another lesson from the 1960s and 1970s Woodhouse missed. Johnson’s Taskforce has its priorities right and deserves support. Forget woolly-minded environmentalism spouted by the likes of Woodhouse, even if it does pass for intellectual sophistication amongst the dilettantes of Potts Point.    TNC  15 November 2006                                                                                                                                                               Top of Page
  	October 2006 Howard's cynicism shouldn't deter land releases + Climate change vertigo Howard's cynicism shouldn't deter land releases On the issue of releasing land to ease the housing affordability crisis, prime minister Howard is a Johnny come lately. It’s not hard to figure out why. Interest rates are edging up, so he needs to get himself off the hook. Interest rates remain the red-hot issue in Australian federal politics. For most of his term, Howard benefited from the wealth effect produced by rising house prices, substantially due to restrictive land release policies. While interest rates were low or falling, discontent about the size of mortgages was containable. He saw no reason to complain about land supply. Any action on this front would have antagonised existing property owners, who stood to suffer a dilution of their home equity. Rising interest rates change the equation, particularly since the wealth effect induced many home buyers to ratchet up their household debt. Howard’s new found concern for the plight of market entrants, like young first home buyers, is pure opportunism. From Howard’s perspective, this issue has the virtue of shifting blame for mortgage belt pain to the state Labor governments, which control land use regulation. Understandably, the federal Labor opposition is keen to exploit Howard’s discomfort and ensure his blame game fails. Labor’s case is that rising interest rates flow from the inflationary consequences of Howard’s failure to invest in skills formation. Opposition leader Kim Beazley and shadow treasurer Wayne Swan have poured cold water on the suggestion that land rationing is a problem. This is a perfectly sound political tactic. It is widely accepted that neutralising the interest rate bogey is a sine qua non of Labor’s return to national office. Nevertheless, it would be a pity if this stance became anything more that a short-term expedient. Land rationing is a real contributor to the housing affordability crisis. For Labor, this should be a fundamental social justice issue. In his report The Tragedy of Planning, Alan Moran of the IPA presents convincing evidence that the cost of land is a dominant and rising component of house values in Australia, particularly Sydney. Moran compares Australian housing markets with the experience of comparable markets with more expansive land release policies. Labor should take the report seriously, even if Howard clutched it like a life-jacket and it was launched by Peter Costello. Consistent views have come from the much respected former Reserve Bank governor Ian MacFarlane. In this respect, the NSW state government’s outlook is encouraging. Some state governments have been lulled into complacency by rapid growth - courtesy of the resources boom - which allows them to squib a confrontation with powerful property developers, often the beneficiaries of land rationing. Others haven’t woken up to bogus Green notions like ’ecological footprint’. However, the NSW government has been in office long enough to pass through those phases. Under Morris Iemma’s leadership, the government is prepared to grapple with the economic consequences of land use policies. To his credit, planning minister Frank Sartor (pictured above)accepts the need to release sufficient residential lots to meet demand, even though he doubts that land supply is the major determinant of house prices. Sartor points to interest rate and tax settings. Still, he has few objections to new releases on planning and environmental grounds, which is a step forward. In the context of his recent announcement of 60,000 new home lots by 2008, Sartor even hinted that there would be more if investors, developers and buyers were interested. Sartor should continue along the path of liberating Sydney’s land supply. Howard’s cynicism demonstrates that it is for Labor to embrace this cause on principle.
  	Climate change vertigo                                                                                                                                                                                Top of page What are we to make of climate change? Media comment on the issue resembles nothing less that a tight-rope walker who sways one way, then the other, but is never able to secure his footing. Sometimes he sways to the left. What are we to make of Tim Flannery’s recent article in The Bulletin magazine (October 3, 2006), in which he endorses a prediction that global warming could raise sea levels by 25 metres? ‘Picture an eight-story building by the beach‘, warns Flannery, ‘then imagine waves washing over its roof‘. Isn’t this far in excess of even the most pessimistic UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios? What is going on? Sometimes sways to the right. Just when things seem settled, they’re not. What are we to make of the open letter to Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada, signed by 60 eminent scientists and researchers? In April this year, 60 scientists and researchers from some of world's most prestigious institutions wrote to Harper saying ‘observational evidence does not support today’s computer models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future‘. They say ‘the study of global climate change is ...an emerging science’ and ‘if, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary‘. According to the signatories, ‘allocating funds to stopping climate change would be irrational‘. How can this be? Al Gore told us the scientific debate is over. Then to the left again. The reaction to Al’s film is another puzzle. For any person approaching it with an open and engaged mind, An Inconvenient Truth raises as many questions as it answers. What are we to make of our usually hyper-critical commentariat who, with few exceptions, have touted the film as gospel truth and the very last word on the subject? And to the right. What are we to make of the recent scientific symposium on climate change at KTH, Sweden’s leading science and technology university? According to Professor Bob Carter, papers delivered at the meeting suggest it is premature to conclude that modern industrial carbon dioxide emissions pose a grave hazard to the planet. What are we to make of the heavy-handed approach to sceptics, who are now branded ‘greenhouse denialists’? This sways dangerously far to the left. The grubby link to holocaust denialism is obvious. Surely, if the evidence for global warming is overwhelming, if the case is now ‘closed’, as environmentalists claim, there is no need to fear the sceptics. Why all the angst? As Brendan O’Neill points out, the assaults on free speech over this issue are truly chilling. The problem is that climate change is too difficult and complex a subject for most people, including most commentators and activists. This is as true of the economics as it is of the science. On the other hand, endorsing a movie and giving a tick to the Kyoto Protocol are easy. It’s also easy to smear and denigrate dissenters rather than debate them.    TNC  15 October 2006
  	September 2006   Farrelly against Cox: low blows in the suburban debate + prophet without honour Farrelly against Cox: low blows in the suburban debate           Excuse the appearance of Herald bashing, but Neighbourhood Diary has another bone to pick with the Sydney Morning Herald. A series of economic and social trends are now converging to place urban development at the forefront of the political agenda. Globalisation, housing affordability, employment distribution, social polarisation and environmental concerns are launching fierce debates about the future of our cities. In this context, it behoves the Herald, as one of Sydney’s most influential media forums, to offer a serious, substantial and balanced contribution to these exchanges. We are sad to report, however, that instead the Herald chooses to push a narrow ideological agenda tied to the interests of its core readership. In Sydney it mostly comes down to the consolidation versus suburbanisation debate. While two of the Herald’s columnists occasionally express dissenting views, the paper’s editorial and feature series line is heavily weighted against suburban development, to put it mildly.                  Sydneysiders are particularly ill-served by the Herald’s urban planning and architecture writer, Elizabeth Farrelly. Her 30 August column on Wendell Cox (pictured above), the renowned advocate of suburban development and co-author of the Demographia housing affordability surveys, was a low point. The column was occasioned by Cox’s presence in the country for a speaking tour. Whatever you think of Cox’s position, he is nothing if not a ‘facts and figures’ man. Critics are obliged to engage with his evidence, if they are serious. Not Farrelly, who quickly veered in the direction of smear and character assassination. “If you think Cox sounds like an apologist for the development lobby“, she says “you’d be right”. Then she reaches for the knife: “His company, Demographia, is part-owned by the controversial New Zealand developer Hugh Pavletich, who, as well as co-authoring Cox’s high-profile ‘housing affordability’ surveys, is known for his demolitions of listed heritage buildings, including one of NZ’s last bowstring truss rail bridges in 2002”. The Herald was forced to publish a correction the next day when Mr Pavletich objected that he does not part-own Demographia. But the Herald chose not to publish Mr Pavletich’s letter rebutting the claim that he demolished listed heritage buildings (interestingly, the Herald recently ran a letter from state MP Kristina Keneally exposing a number of factual errors in Farrelly’s 6 September column). Naturally, Farrelly doesn’t lay a glove on Cox’s evidence. Most of her column is an opinionated rant against suburbs, cars, selfishness and ‘lower chakra thinking (sic)’. She dismisses Cox’s views as ‘silly’, but cites no evidence or research to warrant this judgement. In the end, she scrapes together just one half-reasonable argument. “Outer suburbs are more affordable precisely because they’re not the people’s choice“, she says, “otherwise Kogarah or Minto would be about as affordable as Woollahra“. Of course, this misses the point. Surveys confirm that most people want to live in low-density, detached houses on sizeable blocks. If they can’t afford this type of housing in the fashionable eastern suburbs, they will take it in the outer suburbs. They don’t want to be crammed into high-density inner city units and town houses, where Farrelly would consign them. Farrelly’s quick resort to the knife reflects some disturbing authoritarian impulses. She regularly dismisses the preferences of ordinary working people as stupid or infantile, and is comfortable with terms like ‘eco-crime’ and ‘eco-criminal‘, unembarrassed that they echo ’thoughtcrime’ in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nor does she have a particularly sound grasp of her subject. In her 17 May column, yet another fulmination against suburbs, Farrelly displays the highly idiosyncratic view that suburbs are not urban at all. When she speaks of cities she means inner-cities or the core. Suburbs are something else - some ill-defined twilight zone between town and country. This slant puts her at odds with most, if not all, serious writers on urban questions. It also leads her, in that same column, to misinterpret the urbanist literature. At one point she cites Jane Jacobs’ 1961 classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities as an anti-suburban work. Jacobs attacked the post-war US trend to demolish organic inner-city neighbourhoods in favour of planned large-scale housing projects. However, she did not address the question of suburbanisation as such. If anything, Jacobs’ argument assumed some degree of suburban development to absorb population growth, given that she opposed large-scale inner city redevelopment. Farrelly is entitled to her opinions, of course. But surely the Herald, and Sydney, deserve better.
  	Prophet without honour                                                                                                                                                                             Top of page NSW planning minister Frank Sartor is emerging as one of those politicians who are routinely vilified just for getting things done. Laurie Brereton is another who comes to mind. Perhaps the template for this type of unsung achiever was none other than Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann (1809 - 1891), the creator of modern Paris who was maligned in his own time and ultimately hounded from office. Consider this. While Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore fiddled for years with the significant Carlton-United Breweries site on Broadway (south of Sydney‘s CBD), Sartor, who took over planning control, is about to ensure the lights shine bright on Broadway. The mayor and her camp followers frittered away an opportunity to enhance the standing of Sydney Council - a much needed step - by deferring to the professional nay-sayers in her political retinue. Sartor is moulding a sophisticated outcome that will add dimensions to the CBD and revamp a tacky end of town struggling to fulfill its potential. Amongst the benefits flowing from Sartor’s takeover are the section 94 developer contributions earmarked for the Redfern-Waterloo redevelopment - a classic case of the haves assisting the have nots. Just don’t expect the ‘community’ minded activists of nearby Chippendale and Darlington to celebrate. The Carlton-United site will do for the southern end of the CBD what the East Darling Harbour redevelopment will do for the western flank. But surely the naming committee, established to consider 1600 submissions proposing a new name for this precinct, got it right when they flatly rejected ‘The Hungry Mile’. Many faux-radicals around the inner-city profess to be outraged that the area’s tragic depression era heritage will not be commemorated. The truth is that naming a modern commercial office-complex ‘The Hungry Mile’ is a sick joke. Still, it’s just one more thing to abuse Sartor about.    TNC  17 September 2006

  August 2006

   Trams for toffs + Fairfax launches Sydney Morning Pravda + Calabrians fair game for left-wing racism

  	Trams for toffs Neighbourhood Diary isn’t surprised that the right and left wings of Sydney’s upper middle class have forged an alliance over light rail. Lord Mayor Clover Moore, usherette of the inner-city activist set, state opposition leader Peter Debnam and federal member for Wentworth Malcolm Turnbull, respectively the junior and senior squires of posh Vaucluse, all represent people who work, shop or socialise in one of the world’s most glamorous central business districts but don’t like the plebeian traffic that comes with it. They amount to just thirteen per cent of Sydney’s workers, yet our three tribunes expect the taxpayers of far-flung New South Wales to cough up to the tune of at least $1.6 billion (a conservative estimate in Clover’s 2005 Glazebrook Report). The Sydney Morning Herald’s frenzied support for light rail is also easy to understand. It is a more advanced version of the old tabloid newspaper ploy of inserting lottery tickets in their pages to boost circulation. The light rail network favoured by the Herald just happens to reach places where it’s circulation is highest, radiating from the CBD to the affluent eastern suburbs, inner-west and lower north shore. Buy the Herald and win a light rail station outside your front door. The Herald is so keen on this marketing strategy that it co-hosted a two day Sydney Transport Summit on 6 and 7 July. If media reports are anything to go by, the summit was little more than a hymn of praise to the virtues of light rail. Clover, Peter and Malcolm sang their part. Turnbull pulled out all the stops, hailing public transport as a response to obesity, diabetes, depression and global warming. Leaving aside the inequity of expecting the whole state to pay, however, none of them had a satisfactory answer to the most basic objection. Potentially, light rail’s fixed lines will obstruct motor traffic more than buses, so congestion will only improve if traffic volumes fall enough to offset this loss of flexibility. Yet the ABS reports that use of public transport is already high in the inner-suburbs: ‘inner-city suburbs, with ready access to various forms of public transport, also showed very high incidence of this method of travel’ (Sydney, A Social Atlas, 2001). As far as other suburbs go, a recent AC Neilsen poll found, more generally, that most Sydneysiders prefer to drive no matter how good public transport is. Assuming light rail would entice some commuters from their cars, the question is whether that number would be enough to make a positive difference. That is very doubtful in the case of Sydney. Compared to Melbourne‘s CBD, for example, which is laid out in a grid open on all sides except Port Phillip directly south, the Sydney CBD is a relatively narrow space with fewer entry points, bounded on three sides by Darling Harbour in the west, Sydney Harbour in the north and the Domain/Hyde Park in the east. Sydney also has narrower and more irregular streets than Melbourne. This doesn’t bode well for an easy co-existence with cars, trucks and vans. In other words, as John Lee, CEO of the State Transit Authority, put it, light rail ’delivers a corridor, not a network, of flexible services’. A consistent view has been expressed by one of the country’s leading experts on public transport, Graham Currie of Monash University’s Institute of Transport Studies. Currie doesn’t think light rail is a good option for Sydney. ‘By having light rail in the same lane as buses and other traffic‘, he explains ‘it creates slower trams and makes them more unreliable’. It seems NSW Transport Minister John Watkins was on the right track (pun intended) when he reportedly told the summit ‘trams would be slow, cause traffic chaos in cross streets, and be shunned by commuters who did not want to change from buses at Central Station and Circular Quay’. If light rail renders the CBD impenetrable to much of its motor traffic, the commercial damage would be incalculable. It could even mean the end of the CBD as Sydney’s economic hub. Ironically, this is precisely what the light rail proponents say they want to avoid.
  	Fairfax launches Sydney Morning Pravda                                                                                                                                           Top of page Speaking of the Herald, its publisher Fairfax Newspapers has launched a sister publication, Sydney Morning Pravda. The inaugural SMP declared a state of crisis: Sydney has fallen into the callous hands of bourgeois counter-revolutionaries who are driving the people to destruction. SMP’s rallying cry is a stirring manifesto: ’For the first time in generations children may again die younger than their parents. They eat too much, walk less and worry more. OUR CITIES ARE KILLING US’. Jokes aside, these words are no parody. They are from the Sydney Morning Herald’s News Review feature (print version) of 12 August, the first in a series called ‘Sick Cities: fast life, slow death‘. So how are our cities killing us? It turns out to be a rehash of Herald’s line - prominently featured in last year’s Campaign for Sydney - that the market economy is bad for you. If you thought economic growth and prosperity were desirable objectives, think again. According to the Herald’s twin Cassandras, Julie Robotham and Sherill Nixon, ‘half a century of postwar growth - driven by escalating production, and flavoured by hard-core consumption and mass migration to cities - is yielding a consistent global pattern’. No, they are not referring to the decline of poverty. ’The population’s physical health is starting to degrade.’ As they put it, ‘the body, overfed and under exercised, stacks on weight; those extra kilograms turn on their owners…’ You might wonder how this squares with the steadily rising average life expectancy. Julie and Sherrill acknowledge that life expectancy is ‘slated to increase for at least another half century‘. Yet, they insist, ‘more people will live with debilitating illnesses that will reduce their capacity to work and leach the enjoyment from those extra years’. Surely they’re missing something. Since average life expectancy is projected to reach 87 for men and 89 for women by 2051, the predominant ’illness’ in those ‘extra years’ is likely to be none other than old age. Of course, the Herald will never acknowledge that economic growth is actually delivering better health and higher life expectancies all over the world. Nor does it respect people’s right to choose their own lifestyles. ‘Work, food, suburbs - the fundamentals of our times - are no longer calibrated to be in harmony with the human body and soul…’ So much for cultural and religious pluralism. The Herald proclaims a one and only true faith. Nixon’s lofty disdain for the preferences of working people is hard to miss. At one point she scorns the design of so called ‘dead worm’ or dead-end and cul-de-sac style suburban streets. The complaint, as always, is that they are not accessible to public transport and force residents to rely on their pernicious cars. Having acknowledged that ’the residents love their dead-end streets and their cars’, and ‘say they would never live anywhere else but a cul-de-sac because they are quiet, safe and neighbourly’, she gives them short shrift. ‘New suburbs will be modeled on the inner-city grid pattern‘, she notes with glee, ‘which was developed around public transport before the car was king’. Typically, the Herald makes no space for alternative viewpoints or perspectives, such as the suggestion that the ‘obesity epidemic’ is a figment of flawed statistics. Nor will you find the proposition that over-indulgence - if it is real - owes less to the market economy and more to the 1960s ‘culture of narcissism’, since that is a social transformation the Herald champions. Neighbourhood Diary will follow the Herald’s Sick Cities series with interest, even if it is more about sick journalism than anything else.
  	Calabrians fair game for left-wing racism                                                                                                                                             Top of page Imagine the reaction if John Howard called Morris Iemma ‘a Calabrian choirboy’. There would be universal condemnation. Yet an unidentified friend of Bob Carr is reported to have hurled this epithet at NSW Premier Morris Iemma and Ports Minister Joe Tripodi over their position on stem cell research. In the wake of disturbing racial overtones in a rant against the so-called ‘Terrigals’ (a sub-faction of the NSW Labor Right to which Iemma and Tripodi belong) by left-wing academic and commentator Peter Botsman, it appears that racial sneers are fine - as long as they’re from the progressive left.    TNC  15 August 2006

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     July 2006

  	Dial M4 for murder + The redevelopment we had to have + Clover's cast-offs blossom in Frank's garden
  	Dial M4 for murder If Winston Churchill were around today, he no doubt would have said something like this about Sydney's orbital motorway: never in the field of human engineering has so much been delivered to so many but appreciated by so few. Despite plenty of evidence that the motorway has transformed Sydney's socio-economic development for the better, a political front of activists, environmentalists, interest groups, local councils, journalists and MPs are ever-ready to denounce and resist its completion. One of the motorway's great 'missing links' is the M4 East. Let's traverse a little history. July 2002: the NSW government announced an investigation into construction of a motorway to connect the western portion of the M4, which currently terminates at North Strathfield, with eastward bound Parramatta Road and the City West Link (into the CBD). December 2003: three route options, including the preferred option of a 3.6 kilometre tunnel, were released for public discussion. June 2004: in response to community feedback, the preferred option was lengthened by almost a kilometre. Early 2005: the government decided to reassess M4 East in the context of its evolving metropolitan strategy. In particular, the project needed to be reviewed in light of an enquiry into the expansion of Port Botany and the growth of western Sydney. 15 December 2005: the minister for roads announced that the proposal, as detailed in previous documents, reflected past planning efforts which were not acceptable to the government. The minister said planning for the M4 must conform to the government's recently released City of Cities blueprint, as well as any recommendations of the Richmond Review. Informed readers know what lurks behind this catalogue of stops and starts (and it's only a small part of the story). An inner-suburban, anti-motorway front has intimidated the government and continues to strangle Sydney traffic. The front consists of residents, property owners, local councillors and MPs whose turf lies adjacent to the proposed route. Needless to say, they couldn't give a damn about the economic benefits for greater western Sydney, where most of the city's people now live. The front is clearly nimbyist, even if some members pose as disinterested guardians of the environment. One outfit called EcoTransit hosts an anti-M4 East website full of the same old green mumbo-jumbo: EcoTransit is transport that supports a sustainable economy and environment. The less resources used by the transport sector, the more efficient our economy is and the less damage is done to the environment. Public transport, walking and cycling fits these criteria! Urban freeway development that entrenches prolific car use does not support EcoTransit based economies and cities! The existing M4 works well most of the day, shifting traffic at a medium pace while motorists go about their business with a minimum of fuss. Once drivers are forced off the M4 at Concord and join Parramatta Road, of course, their speed grinds down as their stress levels creep up. Progress is impeded by congestion, endless traffic lights and cross streets. This imposes unacceptable burdens on the circulation of people and commerce in a great city. Congestion is also far more polluting than flowing traffic. The orbital motorway must be fully integrated to provide optimum benefit - that should be obvious. The sooner Parramatta Road is converted to a suburban side street the better. Try explaining that to Leichhardt Council, a leading light of the front. The council is rabid in its opposition to the M4 East, asserting on its website that users will pay $50 a week if they are not killed by exhaust fumes in the meantime. Since the council is so free with ratepayer funds as to pour $10 million down the drain for the Bell's site, perhaps it should cough up a contribution towards the M4 East to alleviate traffic congestion in the inner-west. A final thought in favour of the M4 East. Once - or if - completed it will convey throngs of people from the western suburbs straight across the CBD and harbour bridge to the northern and eastern beaches in a matter of minutes. Just consider the reaction in precious Bondi and Manly.
  	The redevelopment we had to have                                                                                                                                               Top of page Activists behind the Save Sydney Harbour Campaign, who demand that the government ditch its East Darling Harbour redevelopment plan, should listen to former prime minister Paul Keating's thoughts on the subject. Keating was on the jury panel that chose the winning design, and recently spoke eloquently on ABC radio about the project. "We have a chance of creating that natural mini archipelago in the western harbour of Sydney", said Keating, "and it's important therefore that this large piece of land, this East Darling Harbour, has the headland and the greenery on it to link up to that romantic park, if you like". "What I most liked about it", he continued, "was that it gave us a chance of recreating or creating perhaps for the first time, Sydney's second-most important boulevard, behind Martin Place, and that will be Hickson Road". Whatever you think of Keating's opinions on other subjects, his thoughts on urban design and development deserve more attention from a media obsessed with the 1996 election result. Lest it be thought that his concerns extend no further than the aesthetics of harbour-side precincts, Keating also expressed some common sense views on Sydney's orbital motorway: "Well look at the M7, it's a complete success out there in western Sydney.... But I think you've got to give the government due, where it has had a ton of success, and most of the people of this city live to the west, and there's been huge success in these motorways out there". Exactly right.
  	Clover's cast-offs blossom in Frank's garden                                                                                                                                Top of page Neighbourhood Diary just loves Sydney's Lord Mayor Clover Moore. That's why we salute her generous decision to release the city's former chief executive Peter Seamer from the clutches of her rabid camp followers. Strangely, though, the media hasn't reported Clover's debut as recruitment agent for planning minister Frank Sartor. Since his release, the highly-qualified and experienced Seamer has accepted an offer of employment in Sartor's office, where he will no doubt serve the city, and the state, with distinction. Ironically, Sartor has now snatched responsibility for the accident-prone Carlton-United Breweries site (on Broadway south of the CBD) from Clover's fumbling hands, so Seamer is in a position to deliver what he couldn't achieve in the Lord Mayor's activist jungle. If Sartor takes over another of Clover's running sores, Pyrmont's water police site, Seamer will find himself in the gratifying position of revisiting the very issue that ejected him from Town Hall. Seamer follows in the steps of another Clover cast-off, the capable Robert Domm who is now serving Sartor on the revitalisation of Redfern-Waterloo. Is it possible that the minister is paying Clover a spotter's fee?    TNC  16 July 2006

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•    June 2006 
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•    Public interest exploded by fragmentocracy + Punch-drunk Clover fumbles Carlton-United Breweries site

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  May 2006

  Clover wields the cleaver + Bell tolls for Leichhardt ratepayers + Marrickville mayor liberates West Papua

  Clover wields the cleaver   The furore enveloping Lord Mayor Clover Moore over sacked Sydney Council Chief Executive Peter Seamer rages as we speak. Make no mistake, he was sacked - $175,000 payout notwithstanding. Things have certainly changed since Clover's effusive January 2005 statement announcing his appointment: Yesterday, Council endorsed the selection of Mr Peter Seamer as the new Chief Executive Officer. I look forward to working with him and expect he will commence work by early March. Peter Seamer is a highly experienced and distinguished CEO with over 18 years experience as a CEO, having led three Victorian local government organisations and more recently as the CEO of a Victorian state government owned company. He is regarded as Australia’s pre-eminent local government CEO and he will bring a wealth of talent and experience to Australia’s leading global city in this position. It has all gone horribly wrong. The Lord Mayor is confirming in spades what everyone has been saying. She clearly isn't up to holding down the concurrent jobs of Lord Mayor and member for Bligh. It's fine for her to assert that state ministers do two jobs (minister and member of parliament), but they have one master and access to far more resources than an independent backbencher. (Incidentally, Clover copes by muddling her two roles, like using her electorate eNews to trumpet the achievements of Sydney Council). Clover's greatest claim to fame was her spoiler role with fellow independents John Hatton and Peter McDonald in effectively dismissing then premier Nick Greiner and his environment minister Tim Moore over the Metherill affair. These were glorious days, no doubt. The point, however, is that Clover has never built anything, or showed any interest in doing so. She has always been a spoiler and nark who succeeds by indulging the most vocal activist zealots in her electorate. Luckily for her, the inner-city is crawling with them. This is the truth behind the Seamer affair. Seamer's sin was to poke his finger into a raw nerve, the Pyrmont water police site. It is a truism that any scrap of vacant inner-city land will become a magnet for self-serving resident action groups seeking to enhance their amenity. Development will be opposed, and open space demanded. This is always about property values, rather than sham environmental concerns. It is Clover's bread and butter, regardless of a development proposal's merits or the wider public interest. Seamer made the fatal mistake of ignoring the activist's script, so the cleaver struck his neck. This affair demonstrates that when the zealots are thwarted, and they have the power to retaliate, due process, legal obligations and democratic niceties count for nothing. For as long as Clover rules the roost at Town Hall, that disturbing power is in play. Bell tolls for Leichhardt ratepayers                                                                                                                                                    Top of Page The long suffering residents of Leichhardt Municipality lose again. On 13 April the Land and Environment Court ordered Leichhardt Council to pay Bezzina Developers $9.7 million representing the market value of land acquired by council plus $31,375 for losses attributable to disturbance of amenity. (Interested readers might like to read the judgment in Bezzina Developers Pty Ltd v Leichhardt Municipal Council). This came about because a bunch called the Bells Foreshore Community Action Group thought it would be good idea to oppose construction of six luxury apartments on the Bells site at Weston Street, East Balmain. These apartments would have sold at the top end of the market, commanding panoramic views across the harbour to the CBD, North Sydney and Luna Park. In other words, it is prime waterfront land. As is its wont, council chose to indulge the activist ratbags and resume the land for open space, paying Bezzina $7.1 million. Now ratepayers must fork out the rest of the $9.7 million judgment along with the legal costs to fight this case, which had eight sittings before a final decision. Council was represented by two expensive Senior Counsel. Aside from pouring these ratepayer funds down the drain, the silly council will lose ongoing rates that these six properties would have generated and the section 94 developer contributions. A vast sum of money has been frittered away because 34 silvertails wanted more open space 'in their backyards'. At least one of the ratbags seems to be suffering pangs of conscience. According to a report in The Glebe shortly after the judgment, a spokesman for the Bells Foreshore activists, John Stamolis, said “residents were glad a decision had been made but concerned about the amount being spent by council. This $10 million is a huge purchase by council for a small amount of open space”. Mr Stamolis added that Leichhardt and Balmain need other community services as well as open space: "There is a desperate need for active open space as well as childcare centres, aged care facilities and better quality local services. $10 million could have covered all this with money to spare.” Thanks for nothing Mr Stamolis. You and the other selfish ratbags erred in haste; now Leichhardt ratepayers must repent at leisure. Marrickville mayor liberates West Papua                                                                                                                                              Top of Page 'Ten days that shook the world', is how John Reed famously described the Russian Revolution. The world is shaking again - from the epicentre of Marrickville Town Hall. On 23 March Greens councillor and Marrickville mayor Sam Byrne ordered the West Papuan independence flag flown from the highest flagpole in the building. He then presided over a ceremony with other supporters of West Papuan self-determination. He was accompanied by bolshie Green senator Kerrie Nettle. Let freedom ring! The shockwaves will soon hit Jakarta, sending the oppressive Indonesian regime's henchmen scurrying from West Papua forever. “The people of Marrickville expect us to speak up on these types of issues”, declared Mr Byrne. Is that so? What about those who agree with Paul Sheehan’s recent analysis that “bellicose Greens, especially senators Kerry Nettle and Bob Brown, and the meddling by the religious left” are needlessly endangering our relationship with Indonesia? Having liberated the Papuan people, Mr Byrne will now turn his attention to the noble struggle to fill the potholes, scoop the dog poo and empty the smelly garbage bins of Marrickville.

• ---

April 2006

Whiff of blood stirs maneaters at East Darling Harbour + Black future for White Bay + Light rail knocked out by heavyweight

Whiff of blood stirs maneaters at East Darling Harbour

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, up pops another activist group. The latest to bare its fangs is the Blackwattle Cove Coalition, an outfit committed to mauling developers around the foreshores of Sydney's inner-city Glebe and Pyrmont.

In fact the inner-west foreshores are attracting an invasion maneaters at the moment. Yet another is the frenzied group Save Sydney Harbour (‘SSH‘), formerly known as the Working Harbour Coalition. At their recent launch, they boasted a mammoth pair of jaws from that menacing great white, Tom Uren. SSH is intent on having the harbour’s property developers for breakfast.

On the menu is East Darling Harbour's redevelopment, which attracted world-class entries to its design competition. According to the winning proposal by Sydney architects Phillip Thallis, Paul Berkemeier and Jane Irwin, Sydney Harbour's last container wharf and most of Millers Point will be transformed into an 11-hectare park at the northern end, flanked by 1500 apartments and 11,000 offices in 40 residential and commercial buildings at the southern end. On balance this is a good outcome for Sydney. The city is not only Australia’s commercial capital; it is fast emerging as a financial and business services hub for the entire south-west Pacific region. While the proportion of parkland may be considered excessive for a commercial precinct, the important objective of adding a new dimension to the CBD is achieved without imposing unrealistic pressures on transport links into this narrow space. All in all, Premier Iemma and Planning Minister Sartor should be congratulated for pulling it off without succumbing to cross-currents that could have turned the project into a white elephant.

Nevertheless, the sharks are circling. SSH says it wants the harbour’s remaining maritime industry to be protected. It demands that East Darling Harbour’s redevelopment be dumped and reconsidered. Isn’t this fishy? Since when have inner-city activists cared about industry? Just consider their long and unattractive record of hostility to new industry - particularly waterfront industry - within their own localities (for further evidence of this enduring hypocrisy, see the next item).

Their new-found fascination for waterside factories, plants, warehouses and wharves is a temporary tactic to block sale of the land to private developers. Their real objective is more foreshore parkland, along with the associated improvements to their amenity and property values. Neighbourhood Diary has always supported the preservation of inner-city blue-collar jobs, but that must be balanced against particularly significant developments like East Darling Harbour. Those members of SSH who genuinely care about industry, such as the Maritime Union, should be wary. If open space is ever in the offing, they will soon be sold down the river (or, in this case, the harbour).

Black future for White Bay                                                                                                                                                                              Top of Page

Some sharks have travelled a little further west along the harbour to White Bay (Rozelle). White Bay is the site of a defunct power station which has been crumbling for decades while the state, Leichhardt Council and residents squabble over what to do with it. A concrete manufacturer, Independent Cement Ltd (ICL) has finally announced a viable proposal to use the site for a cement storage, packaging and distribution facility.

You guessed it: there is another resident action group. The White Bay Steering Committee is adamantly opposed to the proposal on pro-forma grounds – it will impede views, create noise and dust problems, increase traffic and discourage non-industrial business. They think the site should be turned into ‘a cultural precinct‘, without offering any firm proposals on how to achieve this. Of course, their preference is just a state funded beautification scheme.

Outright opposition to proposals like ICL’s will simply ensure the site remains a derelict eye-sore for years to come. At least the ICL plan might have some public amenity in it. No responsible government would spend vast sums of taxpayers’ money, with no real return, just to satisfy the whims of local residents. For the record, ICL chairman John Holt told The Village Voice ‘there won’t be any problems with dust, or with noise, or traffic. We have sent one of our men around the world for a year, looking at different facilities like this, and we have worked out that this is the best possible design, which will have the smallest possible impact‘.

John Holt can go the way of Harold Holt as far as the activists are concerned. Incidentally, ICL’s proposal sounds a lot like the sort of ‘working harbour’ initiative that should be embraced by SSH. Holt says ‘the way Sydney is expanding, with the amount of construction that is going on, a facility like this is necessary, and this is the best site for it‘. He has a point. The grounds for supporting intensive office construction at East Darling Harbour, essentially an annex of the CBD, do not apply to White Bay.

What prospect that SSH will rush to support ICL? Not much if SSH shares the same little pond with the White Bay Steering Committee.

Light rail knocked out by heavyweight                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Top of Page

A little more sanity enters the light rail debate. Readers of Neighbourhood Diary will know that the creation of light rail lines into the CBD from various points across the inner-city is a cherished dream of Lord Mayor Clover Moore and her network of camp followers. Of course, the dreamers are not at all concerned that the financial viability of such a scheme might turn into someone else’s nightmare. Nor do they care how light-rail lines would affect commuters who must rely on other forms of public and private transport.

Writing in the respected Sydney Central Courier, Australia’s first professor of public transport, Graham Currie maintains that ‘trams are not the answer‘. Professor Currie is chair of Public Transport at Monash University‘s Institute of Transport Studies. He is an internationally renowned researcher on public transport systems with over 25 years experience in the field. As reported by Cara Davis, Professor Currie said ‘Sydney must separate trams from traffic, integrate them with other forms of public transport and not limit trams to just the inner city … Your problem is finding quality access from the suburbs to the city‘. The professor went on to say that ‘another problem is mixed traffic lanes. By having light rail in the same lane as buses and other traffic, it creates slower trams and makes them more unreliable‘. The entire article can be read at www.sydneycentralcourier.com.au

The lesson is clear: death to Clover’s yuppie carousel.
                                                               

March 2006

Greyhounds not welcome at the Pyrmont doggy cafe + Activists blind to government's tunnel vision + Snobbery now a preserve of the left

Greyhounds not welcome at the Pyrmont doggy cafe

“A doggy café was also proposed adjacent to the promenade to cater for dog owners”. That sentence says it all about Pyrmont: The Waterfront Village, a ‘strategic plan’ just released by the Council of Ultimo-Pyrmont Associations (CUPA). You might be at a loss to understand why the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index recently indicated that residents of Sydney’s inner-west aren’t as happy as their suburban and regional counterparts. In fact, it comes as no surprise to Neighbourhood Diary. We are perfectly aware that the good citizens of the inner-west are disconsolate, and we know why.

They haven’t got enough. Enough of what? You name it. CUPA’s forty page wish-list is actually quite funny in a surreal way. These activists, who chose to live in this high-density locality bordering on Sydney’s CBD, now demand more, much more, open space. They demand a public swimming pool, even though one is being built next door in Ultimo. And, they insist, there simply isn’t enough diversity of transport to carry them across the vast expanse of territory between them and the city. So they want a light-rail line to traverse a distance they could easily walk in fifteen minutes. Nor are there enough facilities for ‘passive recreation’. They know what they want and they want it now! While the inner-city has a bulging list of people waiting for affordable housing, CUPA demands everything and anything - but that.

What is CUPA’s dream ‘lifestyle’? Just picture two fluffy poodles, one named Antony, the other Cleopatra, dining on gourmet sausages at their own restaurant. Don’t laugh. If CUPA has its way Tony and Cleo will be munching and slurping in style from Villeroy and Boch doggy plates and Waterford crystal drinking bowls at their very own doggy café.

And if CUPA convinces the authorities to get rid of the greyhounds at Wentworth Park, thus converting the last bastion of working-class recreation into vast open space, little Tony and Cleo will have all the room they need to frolic in springtime. Just don’t expect the redundant greyhounds to score a bowl at the café.

Some aspects of the plan, while amusing in a way, are quite frankly nauseating. The demand for another public swimming pool is a case in point. Sydney Council is already spending $40 million of ratepayers’ dollars on the Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre just down the road in Ultimo, so how does CUPA justify expenditure on such a substantial infrastructure project in Pyrmont ?

It is all transparent enough, though. The activist groups behind CUPA are salivating at the prospect of erasing all traces of Pyrmont’s working-class heritage to capture an escalating price structure for their swank high-rise apartments. Let’s face it, if you have just paid $1.6 million for your apartment, you sure as hell don’t want the dowdy masses on a park bench beside you. Call it turbo-gentrification.

Of course, Neighbourhood Diary is eager to help the fine plutocrats of Pyrmont. That’s why we’ve started a campaign to rename the suburb. How about West Double Bay ?
 

Activists blind to government's tunnel vision                                                                                                                                           Top of Page

It is easy to target the state government over the Cross City Tunnel. There is every prospect, however, that with the passage of time this impressive piece of civil engineering will come to be seen as visionary, a vital channel linking residents of the eastern suburbs with Sydney's advanced service-industry heartland, including the so-called 'global arc' that stretches from the upper north shore through the inner-west to the airport. This is where you will find the IT hub centred on Lane Cove and Macquarie University, as well as the trail-blazing Norwest business park. In this sense, the tunnel represents an important addition to Sydney’s economic infrastructure.

On this score at least, recent comments in the Sydney Morning Herald by Richard Walsh are spot on: "The well orchestrated campaign against the Cross City Tunnel should be seen for what it is: a highly political campaign by Liberal electorates in the east to further destabilise the state's economy. In truth the tunnel is a much needed addition to the city's infrastructure; the principle of user pays is one fervently embraced by the well-healed, except where they re called upon to do the paying".

And the number of vehicles using the tunnel is significantly higher than anti-tunnel action groups will have you believe.

The Eastern Suburbs Neighbourhood Association (ESNA) must be counted amongst the well-healed. Along with many “community” groups, this carping lot worship her worship at Sydney Town Hall. For years they have agitated to incite their stooge Clover to close roads in and around their precious “village” (that word again). At first, the pretext was to herd gutter crawling street walkers away from their abodes. That eventually turned into a general prohibition against anyone they don’t like.

In March last year Labor Councillor Michael Lee asked the Lord Mayor these pointed questions: “Have you or any of your staff ever promised any members of ESNA you would close Liverpool Street at Whitlam Square? Have you or any of your staff had consultations with members of ESNA on this proposed closure at any time since you were elected Lord Mayor?” Clover’s answer has been a long time coming.

It appears the Lord Mayor has good reason to fudge the issue. There is every chance she has promised ESNA, self-described as her “best supporters”, that she will indeed close Bourke Street at William Street and Liverpool Street at Whitlam Square.

So, hiding behind the furore over the Cross City Tunnel, the Lord Mayor has been surreptitiously conniving in the closure of roads while shifting all the blame onto the state government, who, of course, are not entirely innocent.

And yet the tunnel will certainly stand the test of time, including Clover’s shady maneuvers.

Snobbery now a preserve of the left                                                                                                                                     

The Left’s disdain for suburbia is too pronounced for anyone to miss. Neighbourhood Diary must admit to having a gutful of it.

As if hearing that puerile term ‘McMansions’ ad nauseam wasn’t enough, as if Clive Hamilton’s patronising use of the word ‘affluenza’ to deride upward mobility wasn’t enough, we now have this gem from Natasha Cica, an academic associated with the retro-Whitlamite website New Matilda: “Moving generationally forward, how will Australian children raised in the aesthetic and ethical slums of McMansion affluenza share and shape their world?”

Cica’s choice of the word 'slums' is revealing. So-called ‘McMansions’ are the literal opposite of slums. The truth is that high-brow lefties like Cica yearn for the days when working people lived in real slums, where they belong. In those days the game of posing as a champion of the oppressed was much less problematic.

Of course, Cica’s comment is dripping with simple old-fashioned snobbery, not to mention hypocrisy, as her own asset value could easily exceed that of ‘McMansion’ dwellers on the urban fringes. Why should purchasers of existing dwellings in established suburbs be counted amongst the morally pure, even if they are wealthier than couples who choose to build new houses on ‘greenfield’ land?

Traditionally, the Left’s goal was to lift workers out of poverty – today, if the likes of Hamilton and Cica are any guide, the idea is to drop them back into it.                                                                  

                                                                                                                                   

January 2006

Wentworth Park, going to the dogs + For local government, it's a case of think local, act...maybe + NSW Labor: power without glory

Wentworth Park, going to the dogs

Not content with chasing the rabbits from Redfern, or eliminating cars from the city's streets, our friend the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, now wants the dogs out of Wentworth Park, Ultimo.

At its meeting on 14 of November 2005, Council resolved to “call on the State Government to expedite the relocation of greyhound racing from Wentworth Park to a more suitable location; and, Council requests the CEO to explore options for alternative, more suitable locations for greyhound racing”.

It makes you wonder where Clover stands on human beings. Are we next? Are we to be confined to our homes, communicating and tele-commuting with Council supplied Blackberries?

Seriously, one of the last vestiges of inner-city working class recreation is under attack from the mob who tried to kill the mighty Rabbitohs. While the greedy and selfish narks want to convert every slice and parcel of land to parkland for the benefit of their passive leisure and property values, the people who built the inner-city - now sadly yuppified as a village - are being left with nothing. That is if Clover Club gets its way.

In its inimitable fashion, the pseudo-democratic Glebe Society, a signed up member of Clover Club, is on the case. The Society's familiar scorched earth policy is set for another run. While Clover just wants the dogs out, the Glebe Society demands that the grandstand, walls, kennels, turnstiles and all be demolished and turned over to the narks for passive recreation.

If only Clover would take a leaf out of Wollongong Council’s book. While Sydney Council is driven by an assortment of action groups, Wollongong Council recently voted to disband all neighbourhood committees. The voters rule down there.

The dogs have been at Wentworth Park since 1938, a source of pleasure for generations of working class punters. Now the crowds are down but the betting figures are up. While greyhound racing had a 13 per cent share of the betting pool in 1998, this rose to 18 per cent in 2005.

The progressive New South Wales Greyhound Breeders Owners and Trainers Association (GBOTA) is actively working to augment the crowds and community enjoyment of Wentworth Park complex. They have recently engaged consultants to look at ways to increase revenue from the track.

Yet Clover Club insists that larger crowds can’t be accommodated because, among other things, there is a lack of parking space.

We think the former Council depot on the corner of Fig and Wattle Streets, Ultimo would be an ideal parking solution but Council insists that land is contaminated and unavailable for public use. We say Council contaminated the land so Council must remediate it. Imagine if you owned that land! Of course, Clover Club will grasp at any excuse to avoid improving the site’s amenity- it’s called murder by neglect.

For local government it's a case of think local, act...maybe                                                                                                                 Top of Page

Neighbourhood Diary thinks it’s about time more local councils were amalgamated in the Sydney basin. The state government has recently been forced to take over planning controls for a series of larger developments that councillors, quite frankly, were not competent to handle. At Canada Bay, planning minister Frank Sartor had to declare the 52 hectare Rosecorp site on the Parramatta River "state significant", rightly in our opinion, so that work on the longstanding $40 million development project could finally get under way.

The city is littered with development proposals crying out for government intervention. A prime example: the Carlton-United Brewery site in Broadway. A major developer ditched its $203 million contract with the owners and walked away from this significant residential project after continuous obstruction from Sydney City Council over parking space per unit. Another notch on Clover’s studded belt. It can’t be long before Sartor steps in to sort this out as well.

Few are surprised by these sorts of problems anymore. They have been around for decades and reflect the amateur status of local councillors in New South Wales. Many of them are local cranks or party hacks who expect “their turn” on council after years of faithful service. They generally bring little expertise to the job apart from dubious networking skills in the community activist demimonde or within their party circles.

To complicate matters, several councils have set up precinct committee systems where the unelected variety of local crank can exert undue influence on anything and everything in their locality. When Save Our Suburbs type resident action groups are mixed into the fruit cake, it is little wonder that already overworked councillors have no time to study complex development applications. They are too busy placating the burgeoning swarm of activists.

As most councillors are part-time, they are left to discharge their council duties in whatever time they can scrape together after work and on weekends. The outcome: increasing numbers of decisions overturned in the Land and Environment Court. And after costly litigation at ratepayers’ expense. More care and consideration are called for at the approval stage, and less prejudicial input from unelected busybodies.

We suggest that clusters of existing councils be amalgamated to form larger units designated something like Greater Regional Council of "-----". These greater council areas should be run along commercial lines with help-desks staffed by professional decision makers to alleviate the activist angst. Serving as a councillor would be full-time career with a salary scale that reflects the workload and responsibility. A salary structure more reflective of the role’s complexity and workload would hopefully attract more committed candidates.

One step further: over time these bodies should be absorbed into a department of state administered by the government. Resources and functions would then be distributed more efficiently and we will rid ourselves of this pesky level of government forever. Dare to dream.


NSW Labor: power without glory                                                                                                                                                                   Top of Page

Speaking of the state government, Neighbourhood Diary was somewhat puzzled by the vehemence of certain reactions to Iemma. Is there a whiff of spite emanating from certain quarters?

Some commentators were quick to envelope the circumstances of his accession in the sinister mythology of the NSW Right. Labor identity and academic Peter Botsman dubbed it "the day of the Terrigal", harking back, consciously or otherwise, to "the night of the long knives", Adolf Hitler's bloody purge of Nazi Party dissidents in 1934. "Beneath [Iemma's] rise", writes Botsman, "is a malevolent force". He goes on to endorse this purple patch in the Australian Financial Review's editorial on Iemma's elevation: "The Right might think it is innocent, but ultimately the public destroys tyrants". What is the AFR getting at here? At the last general election the public elected the Labor caucus who elected Iemma to the leadership. At the next general election the public can re-elect the Labor caucus and Iemma or not as they choose. Where is the tyranny? Since when has any leadership transition been achieved by the diffusion of sweetness and light? Questions about Labor's internal processes are fair enough, but the AFR overstates the case.

Botsman also argues the "Terrigals", including Iemma, are usurpers, having risen on cronyism and ethnic branch-stacking. He accuses them of "dirty tactics and bureaucratic rule bending and manipulation". Of course, genuine branch- stacking should be condemned in the interests of open and accountable democracy. There should also be an end to abuse of the pre-selection ballot waiving N40 rule. Still, Botsman indulges in selective criticism. He also loses sight of another issue. Considering that the Anglo-Celtic middle-class exercises a stanglehold over the power structures of Australian society, it is not surprising that ethnics who aspire to political careers will tread unconventional - though not illegitimate - paths. This is the case even in Sydney, our most diverse city. Yet Botsman's grudging concession that "Iemma's Italian origins are a refreshing contrast to the waspish Carr and Refshauge" is followed by a back-hander to the Terrigals, "who actively recruited multi-cultural representatives".

In fact, the Iemma government is an interesting landmark in Australian social history. The second generation of our post-war wave of Southern European migrants has come of age. People with names like Iemma, Sartor, Della-Bosca, Nori, Tripodi, Costa and Hatzistergos now sit around the cabinet table. It is no coincidence that many so-called Terrigals represent "the ethnic heartland of Sydney's west and south-west", as it is called by Ernest Healy and Bob Birrell of the Centre for Population and Urban Research. Coming from that background, they will hardly appeal to inner-city professionals or middle-class lefties like Botsman.

The NSW government is indeed one of the nation's few power centres not dominated by the Anglo-Celtic majority. Neighbourhood Diary is still waiting for this to be celebrated by the Left's self-proclaimed champions of inclusiveness and diversity.

October 2005	Top of Page
On the buses The School Student Transport Scheme has been in the news recently because of the behaviour of some private school students – this not the issue here, but their behaviour does betray an attitude of entitlement that goes to the heart of the problem. The scheme started as a way to get children to their local school. Ironically, that’s just what it doesn’t do. When it was reformed, the criteria were changed, so that any secondary student who lives further than two kilometres from their school gets an automatic free pass, while those who live closer than two kilometres get nothing. A NSW Public Accounts Committee report found that the scheme has “the most liberal eligibility criteria in Australia” and is significantly more generous than any other government school transport scheme in Australia. When the scheme first started in 1970, it cost $13m. Now it costs $423m, and it’s rising every year. This is big money: the average cost is $600 per student per year, and 60 per cent of students get something at least from it. We’re getting into serious middle class welfare territory here. The community needs to be made aware of how much public money is being spent on the scheme. Just one (north coast) bus company has been receiving $700,000 a week from the scheme. Part of the problem is that it falls between two departments: Transport, and Education & Training. It belongs to everyone and no one. It has beaten the best efforts of several people to reform it. The scheme is long overdue for reform. A Ministry of Transport report says 32 per cent of students with free passes do not use them because they are driven to school. The passes are free, so why not have one just in case? But it’s costing big money even if it’s not used. The principal of North Sydney Girls High (a very selective central Sydney high school) recently said that 90 out of 150 students in year 7 were suffering stress due to travelling more than 1½ hours a day. That adds up to around $90,000 (based on $5 a day for 90 students a year) in one year at one school – or approaching half a million dollars for the whole school. Private schools, where students travel more, would be even more expensive. The scheme has far reaching effects on public school enrolments, especially in country schools. Everyone knows how stretched the NSW public transport services are. “Free” school transport adds at least half a million journeys to that overpressed service every day. Maybe its time we looked at it again. There are some obvious solutions possible – a means test on applicants, a co-contribution payment from recipients, or withdrawal of the pass if it’s not used a minimum number of times. The government itself has proposed a reform: a ticket reader, so the bus company only gets paid when they actually carry the pupil. Incredibly, at present the bus company gets paid whether the pupil is carried or not. But as yet we have seen no action on this modest and necessary measure. Another possible reform would be to require the pupil to serve a certain time in the new school – a term or a year, say – before they become eligible for a pass. It’s not unusual these days for a young person to enrol as a “local” student at a given very popular school. They have to be given a place because they are “in area”. Then weeks (or even days) later, they arrive at the front counter with a change of address notification and apply for a travel pass. They may have “moved” but they cannot be put out of the school now that they are in it, and they are therefore entitled to free transport. At the very least, let’s make the scheme transparent. Most people have trouble conceptualising huge sums like $423 million. So we should tell them how much each pass costs by printing on the pass something like “The cost to the community of this pass is [say] $10 a day or $2000 a year”. Incidentally, it would then be easy to total up the transport costs to the public of sending all the pupils in the school to that school. In any case let’s put in front of each student and every parent in NSW of the cost of their individual “free” pass. They might then come to value the pass, and perhaps even be more willing to support reform.
August 2005	Top of Page
The Herald campaigns for Sydney as East Berlin Neighbourhood Diary is struck by the increasingly narrow focus of the Fairfax newspapers, beholden to a white-collar, professional, inner-suburban market segment. Hence our apprehension on learning of the Sydney Morning Herald's “Campaign for Sydney". Our fears were quickly realised. Apparently Sydney's problems ("The Sydney Horror Show") are reducible to the prospect of environmental catastrophe. "Sydney is a sprawling, gridlocked, polluted mess", blared the opening headline on 30 May. It is hardly reasonable to fling accusations of greed at a socio-economically diverse city like Sydney, but the Herald's urban affairs writers were not deterred. "Sydney cannot continue living, consuming and travelling in the same greedy, unsustainable way", wailed Darren Goodsir and Tim Dick as they raged against the world. As the campaign proceeded to lay out a series of impeccably Green-Left positions on issues ranging from public transport to water resources, the target of the Herald's anger was soon unmasked: greedy suburban consumers who underwrite the capitalist economy. The Herald, together with its preferred inner-city demographic, is obsessed by the subject of public transport, particularly rail. This comes as no surprise. ABS analysis of the 2001 census found "inner-city suburbs, with ready access to various forms of public transport, also showed very high incidence of this method of transport" (Sydney: A Social Atlas, ABS, 2002). But if you thought the logical conclusion should be greater attention to the underserviced west, think again. At least seven of the campaign's fourteen days were devoted to transport infrastructure, but the Herald endorsed just two major projects for the deprived outer western suburbs – extension of the north-west line to Rouse Hill and the south-west line to Leppington. Now consider what the Herald has in mind for the inner city: a new underground "heavy rail" line from Central to four new city stations and onto a second cross-harbour tunnel to St Leonards; another heavy line from Sydenham to Randwick, Kingsford, NSW University and Bondi Junction; a new "metro-rail" line from the north shore to the city, and to Haymarket, Glebe, Sydney University, Newtown, Enmore and Sydenham; yet another metro-rail line from Drummoyne to Balmain, Pyrmont and eventually on to Maroubra; and a network of "light-rail" lines radiating from the CBD to the inner-west through Lilyfield to Burwood and east down Oxford Street to Surry Hills, Paddington and again to Bondi Junction. The latter, incidentally, is a big tick for Clover Moore's $1.6 billion yuppie carousel (see "Light rail, heavy cost" in our June edition). There's more. Along with a free set of steak-knives, inner-city trendoids get two very long tunnels (on the M4 East route) starting at the Anzac Bridge and Marrickville to swallow noisy freight trucks from the ports. Too much is never enough for the Herald's favourite people. The campaign argued for upgraded transport infrastructure on environmental grounds. Commuters must be lured away from their cars to reduce polluting exhaust emissions. That this problem should warrant a public transport bonanza for the inner city goes without saying. Yet many of the Herald's assumptions about car and public transport use are flawed. According to the NSW Transport and Population Data Centre (TPDC), a number of social, economic and demographic factors are contributing to the rise in private vehicle use ("car mania", as the Herald calls it). These include the growing number of female caregivers in part-time and casual employment, improvements in labour force participation, the expanding cohort of people aged over fifty-five, rising disposable incomes and economic prosperity (Car Travel in Sydney: Changes in the Last Decade, TPDC, March 2005). Whether better transport services can outweigh these factors is open to question. Further, the Herald's methods of paying for the bonanza are inconsistent with the objective of attracting more commuters to trains. Public transport and rail in particular have long been a drain on state treasuries. Poor cost recovery from rail services contributed to the fiscal crisis of state governments in the late 1980s. Some governments "rationalised" their rail networks and launched major road projects like Sydney's orbital motorway. Of course, the NSW Government operates a state-wide system. The state covers a large land mass with a dispersed settlement pattern and low population density. Hence the problem persists. Railcorp recovers only 27 per cent of running costs, and a recent Productivity Commission report found that rail corporations average a 21 per cent negative return on equity (Financial Performance of Government Trading Enterprises 1999-00 to 2003-04, July 2005). The Herald thinks there's a simple solution. Just raise fares and borrow more. "People will pay more for good, fast services", wrote Goodsir and Joseph Kerr on 7 June. But developments cited in the TPDC report raise serious doubts about this. Goodsir and Kerr also float the possibility of tax incentives for public transport users, a regressive idea in equity terms since access to services is unequal between the inner and outer suburbs (which the Herald's program would exacerbate). South-west Sydney does have a serious air quality problem, and the campaign rightly addressed this on 30 May. However, the accompanying graphic and text, drawn from Department of Environment data, suggest that reducing car use may not be the answer. According to the graphic, vehicle emissions are transported offshore by early morning air flows from the mountains. At around midday northeast breezes carry the plume back across the Sydney basin. By night this can be trapped in low-lying areas adjacent to the Blue Mountains, such as the south-western suburbs. Arguably, that region will always be subject to concentrated emissions even if the original sources are diffuse. For this reason, introduction of world's best practice on vehicle emission controls, like Euro IV and V standards, offers more hope of a solution. Many western cities enjoy cleaner air today thanks to technological innovations. As the "sceptical environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg points out, "the rich world is dealing with many of its environmental problems because it can afford to" (Australian Financial Review, 22 July 2005). The Herald is none-too-keen on technological solutions, however. Greedy suburban consumers are let off the hook too easily. For instance, the proposed desalination plant is subjected to a regular bucketing – "because it would discourage water saving" – and "debating the merits of uranium-derived power" is out of order. It's all about stomping on consumption. This is why the environmental movement resorts to creeping authoritarianism and the Herald tags along. On 4 June, Dick proposed the concept of "abuser pays". In full punitive mode, he thought "abusers should pay for using more energy, water or land, for creating more pollution and for insisting on driving when public transport offers a viable alternative". If the Herald has its way, Sydneysiders will be subjected to a new category of offences: green crime. Perhaps "abusers" should be declared "enemies of the people" and sentenced to detention. To make matters worse, the paper wants to introduce a “democratic deficit” into the city’s administration. The failure of local councils to implement a city-wide agenda is properly noted, but Dick proceeds on 10 June to assert the state government can't be trusted either. He conjures up "a half-way house" alternative, an unelected "Commission for Sydney". The commissioners would be "independent" permanent appointments. Abusers can run, but they can't hide. At the same time, consumers are to be bludgeoned with the weapon of higher charges. "Use less, pay more" was the Orwellian headline on 13 June, but Matt Wade spelled it out three days earlier. On 10 June he announced "inflation and interest rates are low and stable, providing a solid economic foundation for new public investment". Without acknowledging how these benign conditions were achieved, Wade calls for "sensible" – meaning higher – transport, water and power charges to pay for the Herald's extravagant plans. As he puts it, "when the right price signals are sent to consumers, the infrastructure built to serve them will be more likely to go in the right places and help to deliver an economic rate of return". Wade stumbles into pseudo-economics. Genuine price signals emerge from the interaction of supply and demand. What Wade is pushing amounts to the imposition of an arbitrary tariff to suppress demand. This is not so much a "signal" as heavy-handed regulation with serious consequences for living standards and economic activity. Along with higher charges, Wade recommends increased public borrowing to meet the campaign's "price tag". But he seems to have missed something. Lower government sector debt and lower state utility charges, thanks to difficult reforms dismantling monopolies and cross-subsidies, have contributed to the low interest and inflation rates that he celebrates. Talk about slaughtering the golden goose. The campaign spared little sympathy for the likely victims of its attack on economic development. Sydney's most vulnerable people live beyond the Herald's horizon. "The highest concentrations of blue-collar workers occurred in the western suburbs of Sydney, stretching from the Canterbury region out to Blacktown in the west and to Campbelltown in the outer south-west", according to the 2001 census. Of course, white-collar workers are another matter. "Sydney is the nation's undisputed white-collar capital", wrote Wade on 6 June. That's why Goodsir's and Dick's 6 June blueprint for the city's development focuses on "central Sydney and surrounds". Their plan is to "re-emphasise regional dominance through upgrading transport access and prioritising a clear growth path" [emphasis added]. For his part, Wade wants to "invigorate Sydney's crucial white-collar jobs market". Apparently, more consumption by inner-suburban white-collar workers isn't such a problem. Not for the Herald calls to promote socio-economic diversity by attracting knowledge-intensive jobs to western Sydney, as authoritative reports like FutureWest (Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils) and Sydney's Economic Geography (SGS) recommend. The inner suburbs, including the so-called global arc corridor, are Sydney's white-collar heartland, and that's that. Blue-collar and "pink-collar" (female-dominated routine service industry) battlers can eat cake. The Herald is strangely muted about persisting pockets of high unemployment and family breakdown in the west. As Basil Fawlty might say, don't mention Macquarie Fields. Suburban employment only rated a mention in the environmental context of lowering car use. On 6 June Goodsir and Dick called for suburban jobs to be concentrated in "centres" accessible by public transport. But as Bob Birrell and Kevin O'Connor said of a similar concept in the Melbourne 2030 plan, "enterprises in manufacturing, research, warehouse, transport and related activities prefer land-extensive location where they can link into road transport to the docks, airport or interstate" (The Age, 22 March 2005). The Herald's ideas would damage Sydney's suburban economy in this and other ways. Having hiked transport, water and power charges, for instance, the paper takes the knife to affordable housing as well. The campaign casually endorses "anti-sprawl" restrictions on the release of land for residential development, resulting in upward pressure on house prices. Other pro-environment measures like the Building Sustainability Index (BASIX) rules (partly warranted) and developer infrastructure levies will add to construction costs in the new "green-field" suburbs ($65,000 per lot!). If increased government borrowing feeds into higher interest rates, there's more bad news for the mortgage-belt. End result: the inner-city reaps a jobs and public transport windfall while the rest of the city pays in higher prices, charges, levies and potentially higher interest rates. Not a bad deal for the Herald's readership. It is easier to disdain outer-suburban workers if they are subjected to negative stereotypes. Emotive phrases like "energy guzzling McMansions" do the trick. Interestingly, that sneering term is rarely applied to the eastern suburbs or the north shore. Perhaps the Herald thinks westies are too uncouth to deserve nice houses. This anti-suburban prejudice veered to the absurd on 3 June, when Elizabeth Farrelly was trotted out for a rant. Posing as the supernanny of Sydney journalism, Farrelly called past tolerance of suburbanisation "total -indulgence parenting" In other words, people who choose to live in the suburbs are infantile. The whole debate about elite snobbery seems to have passed her by. She goes on to advance this remarkable theory of suburban development: "From the viewpoint of the power elites, dispersing the indigent of Chippendale and Surry Hills to the 'burbs not only reduced the likelihood of insurrection but also bulldozed a path for lucrative inner-city redevelopment". Does this sound a bit loopy? Perhaps, but Farrelly is the Herald's architecture and urban planning critic. All of this adds up to a particular vision: a favoured echelon enjoys unearned privileges in the context of wider political authoritarianism and economic stagnation. Throughout, the Herald hankers for a "European-style city", but the city it dreams of vanished in 1989, when the wall came down.
June 2005 Sydney's future: freedom of choice or Green straightjacket? + Light rail, heavy cost + Sydney’s boat owners high and dry
Sydney's future: freedom of choice or Green straightjacket?	Top of Page
Who should decide where you live? Most would say themselves, subject to the resources at their disposal. This question looms large, however, as the debate over Sydney's future hots up. The consensus among urban planners, environmentalists, some developers and most of the Carr cabinet is that the expansion of land under residential development, otherwise known as "urban sprawl", should be contained for a variety of environmental, economic and social reasons. The Government's Sydney Metropolitan Strategy is a creditable attempt to manage the absorption of an estimated 40,600 new residents a year over the next 25 to 30 years, a formidable challenge by any standard. Yet the strategy does attempt to strike a balance between the demand for new residential construction and the perceived drawbacks of sprawl. It proposes that 60 to 70 per cent of the population growth to 2035 be accommodated in areas of established infrastructure, such as the East Central sub-region (a ring enclosed by Chatswood, Bondi, Hurstville and Strathfield). The remaining 30 to 40 per cent are to settle on two "greenfield" development sites in the north-west and south-west of the city. This split-up, like many planning initiatives, may be considered arbitrary. Whether the government got the balance right will be a matter for continued deliberation. To that end it is worth examining the thought processes that underlay the strategy. On any reading of the strategy's discussion paper, it is clear that environmental concerns are pervasive. The paper says "growth will be managed in the GMR (Greater Metropolitan Region) over the next 25 to 30 years within environmental and natural resource limits". This is the fundamental rationale for all that follows, which is striking since most Sydneysiders would rate environmental issues below the pressing concerns of everyday life: housing affordability, jobs, transport and access to services. Of course, the paper does have many positive and useful things to say about such concerns, but environmental issues frame the discussion. Perhaps this reflects the extent to which urban planning academics and stakeholders are now influenced by the environmental mindset. Most Greens call for a halt to any further expansion of the city's suburban boundaries, citing problematical concepts like "the ecological footprint" and "sustainability". However, it is rarely acknowledged that many environmental assumptions are contested. The “ecological footprint” claims to measure the amount of land area and resources needed to sustain an individual's lifestyle. For instance, it has been estimated that 4.7 hectares of land area is necessary to sustain the lifestyle of a typical North American. Addressing the strategy’s Sydney Futures Forum, Dr Tim Flannery claimed “we Australians use 60 per cent more of the environmental services and resources than our continent can provide.” He issued this challenge: “What about just saying to developers: No new developments unless you can do it without making us build another dam or another coal-fired power station?” But the ecological footprint has many critics, such as the Danish National Environmental Assessment Institute, which called it “a one-dimensional figure that relies on an extremely ecocentric sustainability understanding”. As for “sustainability”, research from the US suggests higher residential densities do not reduce car use and may augment air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and lead, while increasing the price of houses. Such research is relevant to Sydney, given the trend over recent decades for manufacturing, wholesaling and transport/storage industries (and their jobs) to disperse to cheaper land on the city’s outskirts. "Sustainability" is a slippery term that is prone to misuse. For some it reduces social questions like class inequality to an afterthought tacked onto the environment, as in the ubiquitous expression “environmental and social sustainability”. Under the influence of social movements like environmentalism, feminism and multiculturalism, the Left has long since lost interest in class inequality. Nevertheless, Neighbourhood Diary maintains the class dimension of urban development should be a foremost concern for any Labor government. Employment opportunities and housing affordability will continue to determine the preferences of low to middle income earners such as ordinary workers with families. The government should not discount these preferences or recoil from the challenge of investing in an adequate standard of infrastructure and services. All of this should cause the government to think carefully about why, how and where it restricts suburbanisation. In this regard, NSW Minister for Roads Michael Costa seems to have delivered an interesting dissent from the strategy. Costa is reported to have said planning strategies were a waste of time as subsequent governments simply ignore them. The Government should put in the infrastructure and let market forces determine where development should go. He is reported to have remarked that urban planners are "obsessed with urban villages", while the public want quarter-acre blocks and prefer their cars to public transport. Costa has a point. Where there is demand for detached houses on larger blocks and developers willing to meet it, government should not always stand in the way, subject, as Costa says, to provision of the necessary infrastructure. Certainly, Costa is more in touch with public sentiment than Adele Horin, the Sydney Morning Herald's voice of the authoritarian Left. She was none too pleased with Costa's remarks. "Relatively few Australians live on a quarter-acre block these days", writes Horin, "and I wonder if many would choose to do so, even if they can afford it". Has she ever left the inner-city? In Horin's mind the whole issue descends to the level of progressive cliché - "the 1950s family proved to be no model for the 21st century; and the 1950s suburban sprawl is no model for the era of looming oil shortages and rising oil prices". Horin is correct in one respect, however. Due to a series of social and economic changes, more people are prepared to live in flats, townhouses and villas than formerly. This is a welcome development. Those aspects of the strategy that promote urban consolidation or higher densities in areas of established infrastructure deserve support. But they deserve support because urban consolidation frees up scarce resources to redress the imbalance between inner-city privilege and outer suburban disadvantage, not to “avoid truly catastrophic climate change” (Flannery's words). Note the verdict of SGS in their report Sydney's Economic Geography: Trends and Drivers: "Absolute falls in outer suburban activity centres such as Liverpool, Mount Druitt, Bankstown, Fairfield and Blacktown are disturbing" (page 116). Yet, as stated above, affordability and blue collar employment opportunities will always attract families to land on the city's outskirts or adjoining regions. Australia's broad land mass, warm climate, low population and outdoor lifestyle are inducements as well. This is especially true of battling couples raising more than two children, that breed of "forgotten people" disdained by the likes of Horin. They should not be stereotyped as greedy rednecks who want to live in "McMansions". Of course, Green activists are often exposed as hypocrites when they condemn sprawl while joining forces with resident action groups to oppose medium to high density developments across areas of established infrastructure, like East Central sub-region. Take Rozelle's Callan Park, where development of less than 20 per cent of the 61 hectare site was ostensibly opposed to protect mental health facilities. Yet the Greens and resident action groups resorted to every flimsy pretext imaginable, including the site's rich history, landscape, remnant bushland, indigenous heritage and habitat. Similar obstructionism has been brewing in other inner-city locations like the Bell’s site at Balmain, Rozelle Bay, the Carlton-United Brewery site at Broadway, East Darling Harbour and Redfern-Waterloo. Insatiable demands for open space and parkland not only block higher density developments; they represent an opportunity cost to public finances equivalent to the market value of the land. Local councils have no stomach to resist the organised and vocal action groups that now control local government politics. As the Australian Financial Review pointed out recently, mayors are "taking on increasingly important roles as brokers between the community and business". In many cases, however, inner-city mayors simply capitulate to the community activists, leaving the state government no alternative but to create powerful development corporations like the Redfern-Waterloo Authority, with a can-do minister like Frank Sartor at the helm. When it comes to the choice of where to live, the Greens and their cohorts will not hesitate to deny freedom of choice to their fellow citizens. Their activism has little to offer in any scenario short of zero population growth.
Light rail, heavy cost	Top of Page
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mark Skelsey spilled the beans on something many have suspected for some time - the inner-west light rail system is “approaching the end of the line”. Skelsey writes that “an auditor's report on the private company which runs the line says there is uncertainty whether it can 'continue as a going concern… and pay its debts when they fall due'”. Cut to la-la land. At the February meeting of Sydney Council, Lord Mayor Clover Moore produced a long awaited minute on aspects of the city's transport problems, focusing on the CBD and inner city. The minute endorsed conclusions in the Glazebrook report, a comparative study of mass transit systems commissioned by the Inner Sydney Transport Working group (ISTWG) whose members include the Lord Mayor herself and representatives of Railcorp, State Transit Authority, Sydney Buses, RTA, SHFA, Treasury and DIPNR The report by Glazebrook and Associates et al can be found at www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au, under the title “Mass Transit for Sydney’s CBD and Inner Suburbs”. In short, Glazebrooks recommend “light rail as the most appropriate mass transit system for the CBD and for five key corridors linking the city with the inner suburbs…." Naturally, the proposed corridors criss-cross impeccably trendoid territory - the CBD to Maroubra Junction via UNSW, Burwood via Lilyfield, Mascot via Green Square, Burwood via Parramatta Road and Bondi via Bondi Junction. Well, Neighbourhood Diary thinks the estimated cost of up to 1,600 million taxpayer dollars is just a bit steep. You see, the catch is that the state is expected to foot the bill for this yuppie carousel. Clover and the gang are oblivious to the inequity of such a demand while the transport infrastructure needs of the western suburbs are far more urgent. According to the recent FutureWest report (Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils), average travel times for commuting trips by car and public transport are generally longer in Greater Western Sydney than for the rest of the city (page 27). Glazebrooks resort to "creative class" arguments like "attracting and holding staff in a globally competitive world", but it must be questioned whether lavishing more dollars on yuppie-land is warranted when Sydney regularly tops international 'quality of life' surveys. Further, while the Glazebrook proposal aims to cut the number of buses entering the CBD, it may not reduce CBD traffic congestion generally. Inner-city commuters don’t tend to drive to work. ABS analysis of the 2001 census confirms that "inner-city suburbs, with ready access to various forms of public transport, also showed very high incidence of this method of travel". The plight of the current inner-west line is a cautionary tale. Skelsey claims the managing director of Metro Transport Sydney (the owners) is keen for the state government to subsidise or take over the operation. Now if the private sector has trouble breaking even, why would the government do any better? In public hands, the line would simply be a drain on the state's finances. The owners claim the line would indeed be viable if the current seven kilometres of track was extended from Central to Circular Quay. Yet they call on the government to cough up $40 million towards the cost of the extension. It appears private investors have shunned the project. Again, why should taxpayers rush in where angels fear to tread? Returning to Clover's follies, Labor Councillor Michael Lee stands out as the voice of sanity in this affair. He spurned the Glazebrook proposal on the ground that it isn't economically viable - certainly not at a cost to NSW taxpayers of up to 1,600 million dollars. Skelsey’s report on the current light rail system vindicates Lee’s courage and prudence.
Sydney’s boat owners high and dry	Top of Page
Neighbourhood Diary recently paid a visit to Balmain Leagues Club for a community forum on Rozelle Bay’s dry boat storage facility proposal (see "keeping the riff-raff out of Sydney Harbour" in our last edition). The forum was arranged by the consortium behind the project. In the context of inner-city resident action hysteria, they are very brave indeed. Just take a look at their ambitious plans at www.rozellebay.com.au. The assembled throng were treated to coffee, biscuits and a slide display detailing the proposal’s progress to date. It came as no surprise that the questions fired at the proposed Rozelle Bay Marine Centre were, on the whole, rather hostile and in some cases vexatious. For instance: “Have you considered that the predominant wind on Sydney Harbour is a north-easterly and will carry noise across the water to the residents of Glebe?” The principals had indeed considered that. In fact they carried out quite exhaustive and expensive research into the noise from boats entering and leaving the facility and general noise from the operation of the facility. Following procedures developed by the former Environmental Protection Agency (now the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation), whose guidelines can be found at www.epa.nsw.gov.au/noise/nglg.htm, the consortium showed that according to measurements taken at four diverse points around Rozelle Bay, any noise likely to be generated by the facility is well within EPA limits. But the questioners were undeterred: “Yes but what about Annandale, you have forgotten Annandale!” Not so, countered the consortium. Annandale was indeed considered, but the noise levels reaching Annandale were quite weak and outside the measurable guidelines. The objections came thick and fast. “What about those boat owners that break the speed limit of 8 kilometres per hour and cause a large wash? What are you going to do about them?” Quite reasonably, the principals thought that is a matter for the Waterways Authority (now renamed NSW Maritime) boating officers, whose job it is to police the waterways. And should anyone have any doubts about how seriously NSW Maritime takes the environment, read their press release at www.maritime.nsw.gov.au/mediareleases/media-environment.html. This is an article on wash restrictions and protection of the marine environment which also outlines penalties for those who break the rules. More importantly, it confirms that the state government is conscious of its responsibility for a fragile aspect of the environment. “Well, what about the boating congestion that will be caused by the proposed development of the Fish Market?” Answer: when the Fish Market is developed, their plans will have to take account of this facility. The consortium thought it was a bit much for them to consider something that didn’t yet exist. In any event, the ‘maritime rules of the road’ will apply to all users of the harbour. The meeting continued in a similar vein with thrust, parry, thrust. And yet the consortium is determined to proceed with this badly needed amenity and might just prevail. The original design was for a facility housing 1,110 boats. In the face of objections this was cut back to 850 and then again to 680. So the activist Narks appear to be winning in one sense. This reduced capacity means it is just that bit harder for ordinary folk from all over the city to enjoy boating on beautiful Sydney Harbour. Thanks for nothing. The consortium have foreseen most of the problems and commissioned independent studies into all aspects of the project. Let us hope it is enough, and that this imaginative proposal does not go the way of Callan Park.
March 2005 Frank Sartor's Risorgimento di Redfern-Waterloo + keeping the riff-raff out of Sydney Harbour + Leon Trotsky haunts Callan Park
Frank Sartor's Risorgimento di Redfern-Waterloo	Top of Page

Frank Sartor will need all the skills and resources of Garibaldi and his Garibaldini to revolutionise Sydney’s inner city Redfern-Waterloo. But Premier Carr probably got it right. If there is one cabinet minister for the job, it’s Sartor.

For the uninitiated, the Redfern-Waterloo Partnership Project (RWPP) encompasses a comprehensive blueprint (officially called the Redfern-Waterloo Plan) to revitalise and renew – Risorgimento! – the inner suburban precincts of Redfern, Everleigh, Darlington and Waterloo (REDW). The most controversial aspect of the plan is the creation of a powerful new consent authority, the Redfern-Waterloo Authority (RWA).

For most Australians Redfern is notorious for “the Block”, a rundown indigenous ghetto which occasionally erupts into violence, most recently in February 2004. For this and other reasons, Redfern-Waterloo did not experience the process of gentrification that transformed the rest of the inner city. There is no question that the area suffers from decades of neglect and underdevelopment. Some creative attention is long overdue.

Interested readers can learn more about the government’s development and urban renewal strategies in “The Redfern-Waterloo Plan #1”, a pamphlet published online at www.redfernwaterloo.nsw.gov.au. This website contains a wealth of other information about the RWPP.

The plan has a lot of merit. It incorporates many of the principles that must drive the development of Sydney – urban consolidation to contain sprawl, preservation of public and affordable housing stock to promote socio-economic (and in this case racial) diversity, improved public transport infrastructure with the upgrading of Redfern railway station. Not to mention a sensible approach to ending the blight of the Block.

REDwatch is the only narky activist group to surface so far. Like many others this particular group is highly organised but poorly informed. Take their leaflet headed “Redfern-Waterloo cannot just trust Frank”. It whines that “Redfern-Waterloo is being asked to trust in Minister Sartor and his successors to look after our ‘urban renewal’ for the next 10 years with little up front information, little legislative constraint and no guarantees of real community involvement in the process”.

This is just typical interest group blather. It is fair to say the government has not put a foot wrong with this project. Sartor’s way is a far cry from opposition leader John Brogden’s dictum on the Block: “bulldoze it”. Sartor and the RWA board have committed themselves to “broad community consultation”. In relation to the Block, the NSW Parliament Social Issues Standing Committee of Inquiry into issues relating to Redfern-Waterloo acknowledged that redevelopment of the Block is of the utmost importance. And the website contains as much information as anyone would need, even to the extent of listing, with biographies, the RWA board appointees.

This leads to another little irony. In a fit of pique Lord Mayor Clover Moore “squibbed it”, as Labor Councillor Michael Lee put it at a recent Council meeting. Hiding behind her interpretation of the rules governing members of the RWA board, the Lord Mayor decided it would be in the best interests of the City of Sydney to have NO representative on the board. Incredible.

Apparently Mayor Moore took exception to the fact that board members “are not to criticise the Authority, any NSW government policy or the activities of any other NSW Government Department or instrumentality”, and “should refrain from publicly criticising the management and staff of the RWA”. The quoted words appear in a Mayoral minute, item 3A in volume 5 of the proceedings of the Council’s meeting on 21 February 2005. We think we’re looking at a one term Mayor.

Councillor Lee’s theory is that Mayor Moore is out of sorts with other members of the board, specifically Frank Sartor and Robert Domm. We think he may be right.

Petty politics aside, it was a pleasant change to see some positive and fair coverage from the usually petulant Fairfax press. Writing in the Sun-Herald of December 2004, Sally Loane called for “a Redfern to make us proud”. She offers Minister Sartor this advice: “Frank, go your hardest in Redfern and Waterloo. Preserve the good and eradicate the evil. Don’t listen to the latte set who say its dark underbelly is part of the ‘romance’ and character of the place. Children growing up in deplorable poverty, being belted and dragged along the street, turning to drugs and crime is not my idea of romance. Redfern doesn’t have to be the next Paddo or Pyrmont, but it desperately needs to change so life is better for all its residents”. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

In the same paper on 13 February 2005, Alex Mitchell faithfully reported comments by Kristina Keneally, Labor member for the state seat of Heffron (which covers REDW), that she welcomes the establishment of the RWA and told Trevor Davies of the South Sydney Herald that she would chain herself to the front door of a housing commission high rise and resign as MP if current residents are moved out. That’s one in the eye for the scaremongers.

Thankfully the resident action groups cannot derail this project. It has legs and a Minister who can deliver.

The Heads, the Opera House, the Bridge - Sydney Harbour is the city's most valuable asset. NSW Minister for Sport and Tourism, Sandra Nori is right to call it "a world-class treasure". But how many of Sydney's 4.1 million residents are benefitting from this asset? Fewer and fewer, it seems.

Over recent years two competing visions of the harbour's relationship with the rest of Sydney have emerged, represented by the terms "foreshore access" and "working harbour" respectively.

Unfortunately, the position of the NSW Government is often ambiguous; for example these contradictory ideals sit side by side in the Government's Sharing Sydney Harbour vision.

At first blush the idea of expanding foreshore access - promoted relentlessly by the Greens, sundry action groups and conspicuous idealists like Labor icon (now born again Green) Tom Uren - would seem to serve the public interest admirably. On closer examination this proves illusory. Foreshore access usually means converting waterfront land to open space or parkland at public expense. In few cases, however, does this attract tourists or visitors from across the city. Foreshores west of Darling Harbour attract fewer still. The beneficiaries tend to be nearby property owners, most of whom are already affluent and privileged. Their amenity and property values soar.

On the other hand, many stretches of foreshore are still officially zoned for working harbour use in line with Sharing Sydney Harbour. For instance the Master Plan for inner city Rozelle and Blackwattle Bays (Sydney Regional Environment Plan No. 26) says the wharves of these bays "are a vital working part of Sydney Harbour". The Plan goes on to list as a key objective: "Sensitively upgrade and redevelop the area to optimise its viability and flexibility for a range of maritime operations".

The question is whether the Carr Government is prepared to stand up for this element of its vision

Properly understood, a working harbour vision should be about more than just preserving the light industrial (often maritime) activities that traditionally ringed the foreshores of the inner west. It is also about creating real points of engagement with the harbour by means of diverse social and commercial uses. These could include boating access and storage facilities, sporting and social clubs, community venues, entertainment areas, educational institutions, specialised retail outlets and similar activities that would draw users from across the city, including the western suburbs. They are much more likely to come for such specific purposes than to sit on another patch of grass.

Apart from drawing a wider pool of Sydney residents to the harbour, these types of uses could go some way towards stemming the flow of blue collar jobs from the so called "global arc" corridor from the inner city north to Chatswood.

Such considerations are in play with two proposals for Rozelle Bay. Both are consistent with the Government's working harbour vision. One is a slipway and the other a dry boat storage facility. The latter in particular offers an opportunity for safe and secure boating to substantial numbers of Sydneysiders. The harbour's mooring facilities in the inner west and elsewhere are just about full and this proposal would help alleviate the problem. Apparently the developers aim for a capacity of 860 boats but it is likely to be some time before that number is reached.

The action groups are once again out in force. The Glebe Society, in its inimitable way, declares the end of the world as we know it. The alarmist website www.prezdesign.com.au/clients/rozelle/dryboat.htm has also made an appearance, replete with the usual inaccuracies and misinformation. The little known Save Rozelle Bay Committee has now joined the chorus of disapproval. Their idea of saving the bay is to stultify the precinct and restrict access to people like them.

Thankfully, others have a different view and there must be hope for the projects yet. In particular, we were impressed by the contribution of two correspondents to The Village Voice, a popular local newspaper. Peter Burley of Balmain wrote:

“About time! Storage facilities for recreational boat uses are almost non existent in the inner west, for the thousands of people who own small to medium vessels and wish to USE the most beautiful harbour in the world. New boat ramp facilities have been dropped, following a campaign by those that wish to have that part of the harbour for their own “passive use”. I don’t recall any consultation on this issue before the decision was made.

Dry boat storage, close to the lower harbour, is needed to avoid the Parramatta river being used as a highway for those wishing to access the harbour from west of the city. This will have great benefit to other users of the harbour, residents along the river and for safety. Rozelle Bay is the last area available for such a use. Those wishing to access the harbour by small affordable boats in the future will be greatly disadvantaged if we don’t develop the facilities now. Bring on the dry storage and while on the issue how about really seeking out opinion on a proper boat ramp at the same time”.

Phil Collins of Rozelle had this to say:

"I strongly support the dry boat storage proposal for Rozelle Bay. Even better would be a large marina to get boats off all the moorings which clutter up the waterways. Concentrated boat storage with dry or wet berths make it possible to identify and control any boat sourced pollution. Marina developments can include restaurants and other tourist facilities as is evident in most forward thinking cities. Rozelle Bay has had a maritime and industrial past and current proposals could not be described as over-development.

The passive recreation use implies that the harbour is just an ornament, like Lake Burley Griffin. Perhaps those of that view should move to Canberra. Otherwise get a boat and join a sailing club and use the wonderful asset on our doorstep.”

Well said, Peter and Phil. Let's hope the Government's vision is not impaired by self-serving activist bulldust.

Callan Park is in the news again. It may be the goose that laid their golden egg at the 2003 Council elections, or it may be loyalty to Leon Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution" (ave Hall and Issy) - whatever the reason, the Greens and their comrades the Friends of Callan Park will not let up.

The Carr Government deserves credit for many bold and visionary initiatives (see Redfern-Waterloo above), but its capitulation to the activists in this case was disappointing. Callan Park could have been a city-wide model for the sound urban planning objectives enshrined in the Sydney Metropolitan Strategy. Instead, most of this 61 hectares of prime waterfront land in Rozelle will serve little purpose beyond hiking the value of adjacent properties. Another case of private gain from public pain.

The latest episode to mobilise the activists was talk of "a secret plan" to develop part of the site for an "essential services training academy". According to a local newspaper, The Glebe, "campaigns gained momentum after rumours that the site would be turned into a facility for fire, ambulance and corrective services, and the police". Horror! Heaven forbid that vacant inner city land be converted to practical use - creating jobs and business opportunities in the process - worst of all by the gendarmerie of the bourgeois state.

While the government has flatly denied the rumours, the Greens and FOCP can be counted on to ensure the revolution continues. Neighbourhood Diary will of course stay on the case. In the meantime, can somebody lend us an ice pick.

An article in the October 2004 issue of The City News, a local newspaper distributed to 35,000 inner city residents and businesses, cried “It’s raining umbrella groups in Pyrmont”. Beneath that article was another with the headline, “Call for more community input into three Pyrmont Parks”.

Where does it end? A close examination of these action groups would reveal that most consist of no more than 10 to15 close associates or neighbours. When they call on members of parliament, as they do at the drop of a hat, they invariably claim their views are consistent with those of the communities in which they live. In fact they are consistent only with themselves, and only sometimes! From time to time these tiny groups even splinter further, so are actually representative of an active handful.

The members are also known to infiltrate each other’s groups. A close look at a cross section of umbrella groups would probably show the same faces run all of them in any given area, and far from being the public forums they claim to be, generally conduct meetings by invitation only.

Such groups have had some successes of late, notably the police site at Pyrmont Point, the Ultimo aquatic centre and Rozelle Hospital.

The Pyrmont Point police site may actually need remedial action because of the polluted soil - that’s a big win for the ratepayer! Had the site been allowed to proceed to tender as the Sydney Harbour Foreshores Authority wanted, the developers would have had to cleanse the area themselves.

At a reputed cost to the ratepayer of $40 million, the aquatic centre appears to be another winner. Located on a busy, polluted intersection, this facility is a win for a very noisy minority. At a real public forum, the Lord Mayor of Sydney rightly said there were a lot of swimming pools in the Sydney Council area, all surrounded by parkland. At the time the Mayor could not see the need for another pool within such a densely populated area, especially populated by cars. And neither can we.

Imagine the affordable housing that $40 million could pay for - but not in my backyard, mate!

Rozelle Hospital, oh Rozelle Hospital. What might have been. If only the pollies had the guts. Very few people use this park except as a community ashtray for dog droppings.

Then they got rid of the boat ramp in Banks Street, Pyrmont. God forbid that anyone from the benighted western suburbs should want to use a boat ramp in "our harbour".

There doesn’t appear to be any public rationale behind these outcomes. They happened because of the relentless plague of action groups, because noisy minorities must be heard, because they wish to build a wall around the village to keep them safely inside.

In future diary entries we'll get down to brass tacks on these and other developments. Watch this space.